


It’s no use going back to yesterday

by Pistol



Category: Firefly, Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Setting, Drug Abuse, F/M, Families of Choice, Mental Health Issues, Miscarriage, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:01:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 68,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22393945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pistol/pseuds/Pistol
Summary: She'd never noticed the Alliance stamp pressed into the nutritional and immunization bars. Truth be told, she hadn't so much as looked at the bars Neal had procured and that knowledge sits like a stone in her gut. Emma remembers thinking she was better than this, remembers priding herself on it.
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan, Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Mad Hatter | Jefferson/Emma Swan, Huntsman | Sheriff Graham/Emma Swan, Mad Hatter | Jefferson/Emma Swan
Comments: 34
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> No Beta here - read at your own risk.  
Heed the warnings, and if you have questions or concerns about the flavor of triggers here feel free to reach out to me for clarification.

It starts to come together like so many tragedies: in a cold, dark place. Beylix's sky is covered year-round by heavy clouds and rings of ice, it and it's people too far from their systems sun to feel any traces of warmth.

Around Emma the alley is bitterly cold, but not as cold as her heart feels when the Alliance officer starts talking about a tip that had come in anonymously.

+

She'd never noticed the Alliance stamp pressed into the nutritional and immunization bars. Truth be told, she hadn't so much as _ looked _ at the bars Neal had procured and that knowledge sits like a stone in her gut. Emma remembers thinking she was better than this, remembers priding herself on it.

Soon enough she finds herself sitting behind a flimsy desk and awaiting a judge's verdict, so clearly the stamp isn't the only thing she's missed.

In the end the judge doesn't believe Emma's ignorance but Emma really never really expected her too.

+

Prison isn't all that new or scary. It turns out that a penal moon colony is reminiscent of some of the Alliance funded foster camps Emma had been placed in. You work hard, you eat the nastiest protein pastes the 'verse has to offer, and you're always too hot or too cold when it's time to sleep. The violence is equally predictable and Emma listens and learns which inmates and guards to avoid and which to fight tooth and nail if she finds herself alone with them.

It doesn't matter what some of the others say, being in the med bay with a few broken fingers and some bruises is better than the other option.

It's this idea that lands her in the med bay, getting a dermal seal on a cut on her arm and having the bones in her other arm reset. This too should be predictable, but for the first time in a long time it isn't and the med-scanner above her bed makes a shrill chirp as it pulls up a hologram of her body, focusing in tightly over her abdomen.

"Oh," the doctor says glancing up disinterestedly from Emma's arm towards the cascade of data. "Congratulations."

+

They take a DNA sample even though Emma swears none of the guards are the father.

"For legal reasons," the nurse explains with a saccharine smile.

Emma hums noncommittally, swinging one leg back and forth absently over the edge of the exam table.

She already knows what the test will say. It will come back as an unknown DNA donor, or, if Neal has been _ especially _ careless she'll get to see a picture of him pop up on the screen. The important part is that Neal is the father so Emma doesn't need to worry about her pregnancy taking a turn for the worst after a prenatal booster shot like so many others pregnancies here do.

She's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

+

Emma listens as the doctor tells to her how much the adoptive mother is looking forward to meeting her child, how well taken care of the baby will be, and she pretends to believe them about it being her choice. She nods at all the right times and puts her initials in all the carefully marked lines.

Soon enough she no longer gets called to the infirmary on the colony for checkups, instead arrangements are made to ferry her to a fancy hospital on one of their wealthier sister moons. Following in suit her work hours are drastically cut, she's moved from protein vat maintenance to office work, and her rations improve in quality radically enough that she knows someone somewhere is honestly interested in the well being of their future child.

She pretends to make peace with that knowledge and tries to enjoy the food and luxuries that will eventually disappear, along with her child.

+

She's being walked through what feels like the start of a nasty ice storm and towards a shuttle that will take her for another pre-natal checkup when all the guard's radios start screaming.

"Say again," the lieutenant yells, cupping her hands vainly around the radio like it might help reduce the screaming wind all around them. "Control, we aren't reading you over all this fucking wind!"

Across the deck Emma spies a warm light coming from the open hatch of a tiny ship. Three people are exiting from the hatch at full speed and heading towards something Emma can't make out through the snow. In a detached way she can't help but admire their foolishness. Be it a minimum-security penal colony or a Core planet it's never a _ good _ idea to leave an open ship laying around.

Carelessness like that leads to theft. Even worse, it's even been known to lead to two strangers meeting and falling in love.

Emma's guard is still alternating screaming into her radio and holding it to her ear as she squints into the harsh wind. She's paying Emma no mind, but truthfully no one really has since her stomach started to swell - one of the benefits of being a well behaved and obviously pregnant prisoner.

Less than a five minute run from where they stand the ice is already melted off the engines of the recently abandoned ship. Old habits die hard and Emma can't help but notice how so few of the other crafts on the tarmac can boast the same. In this weather it'd take at _ least _ fifteen minutes to get any of the iced-up ships ready for take-off.

In the distance there's yelling, unintelligible over the elements.

Her lizard brain has been screaming at her for a while but Emma's starting to think maybe it's for a good reason as the faint sounds of sirens fill the air.

_ -ming in blin-CHZZZK-eed to-SHHZTT-vacuate the tarma- _ the lieutenant's radio squawks.

Emma fills in the blanks easily enough, her eyes snap back to the ship and her fingers itching as adrenaline starts to course through her veins.

"Control - goddamnit, Control!" The guards slaps at her radio in a hopeless attempts to clear up the static.

Emma has done her share of stupid things in her life, but in her defense stealing a guards keys and running (or, trying to) across the tarmac while pregnant seemed like a good enough idea at the time.

+

There's always a jump and a flutter in your chest when taking off as quickly as Emma does, but this time she doesn't notice it. All Emma can see is the blip that's been screaming across her sensors, too fast and too big to be anything but trouble. When it finally roars by her tiny ship its wake almost rips the ship apart and takes half her coms and sensors arrays with it.

The ship continues to chirp and yells it's various alerts up at her as the light on her sensor disappears and various planetary sensors start spiking in ways that she really doesn't want to think about. Emma ignores them and their implications, curling white-knuckled hands around the controls as she tries to ride out the waves of energy pulsing off from the surface.

When she breaks atmosphere Emma's too tired to do much more but to scream along with the ship's sensors.

+

It's not Emma's finest hour, but she is still breathing under their own power and no longer making her way through what was looking like ten year stretch on the colony so it's not her worst hour either.

She reminds herself that she's survived worse. She's lived through near-death experiences, betrayal, and angry men and women who've had too much power over her. Sure, a lot of the time she'd only gotten by on by the skin of her teeth - but she's flown ships in worse condition than this. She's started from _ nothing _ more than once, so nothing has really changed except for the life lesson and the unexpected cargo Neal had left her with.

Besides, there are ways to deal with _ that _ . Parents who aren't _ her _ \- parents who have so much more than she could ever offer a child.

If she's crying, it's only because she just escaped what is looking like the destruction of a penal colony moon. It's the adrenaline crash, nothing more. Everything is going to be just fine.

So what if that sounds like a lie?

+

Six and a half a parsecs later nothing is fine and Emma is having trouble breathing.

"Come _ on _," she begs in-between wheezes, refreshing the computers display like it might help her find a hint of good news buried under all the atmosphere leak and environmental shutdown warnings. The gravity plates long since gave up the fight, leaving Emma strapped into a too-tight harness that digs into her stomach painfully and sporadically needing to bat her hair out of her eyes.

"I'm starting to think that the reason they left this ship was because no one in their right mind would have tried to fly it," Emma informs her stomach, one hand protectively curled around it as she pulls up information on the nearest docking areas, planets, moons, and ports. She dismisses almost all of them immediately - most places in this sector would happily shot at her ship on sight the moment they identified a stolen vessel from a penal moon. The ports that wouldn't shot her on sight would be expecting answers she doesn't have, and given enough time she's sure she could be compelled to tell them any lies they wanted. The Alliance has always been persuasive like that.

A faint feeling of hope stirs in her chest as she stops on the _ Wolf's Den _. It isn't the best port but if the whispers are right it's a Brown Coat haven. For the right coin or labor it should be willing to be an ally to just about anyone trying to weather any storm - of Alliance origin or otherwise - that might be following them.

It's easily the best option Emma has of living long enough to ask for help so she sets in a course and starts up a hard burn towards its location.

+

The closer she gets to the _ Wolf's Den _ the more she can't ignore how much her stolen Wren is out of step with the snarl of questionable ships and their even more questionable crews. She can't help but notice at least two ships right off the bat rigged up with blatantly illegal weapons platforms. Emma's no stranger to shady ports, but she's never been to one that so openly flaunted its colors.

Not for the first time she wishes that today had ended any other way than it actually did.

_ "Wren Light Transport, please identify yourself," _a hail comes crackling over the coms.

Emma does her best to find and open what's left of her coms, pushing all available energy to boost the signal while her vision starts to swim and her lungs move past the point of burning. It takes her three tries to find all the right commands.

"This-" Emma curses, quickly scans through the ship's logs for a name, "this is _ Bug _ ." _ Fitting _ she thinks as she tries her best to pull in a steadying breath from the thin air, "I'm requesting emergency docking."

_ "And people on the rim want warm cocoa," _ drawls the voice.

"My ship's environmental system-" Emma feels her hand instinctively move to her swollen stomach in a vain showing of what she's certain will turn out to her only good maternal instincts, "I think- the baby-"

Her head feels like it's detaching from her body. It's pulling her apart while the voice on her coms starts talking faster, starts screaming about rubies and shuttles all the while the burning in Emma's lungs has spread like fire along her limbs and settled in her stomach like-

"I'm so sorry," Emma tries to tell the baby but it comes out a gasp and a cough. She just needs it to know just how much she wished it had gotten a better mother, a better chance, a better-

+

There are flashes of light. Moments of chaos and briefer moments of lucidity that leave her gasping and screaming depending on the pain levels.

Mostly though, there's nothing.

+

It comes back though, all of it. Emma's luck is bad like that.

+

It takes two tries, and Emma's fairly certain she can feel her throat crack and bleed under the effort she manages to finally ask one of the strange faces in the room _ What happened? _

A bored-looking man starts to open his mouth but he's stopped by an older woman - the same voice from the hails - ordering him out of the room. She comes to Emma's side, putting a large hand over hers and speaking hushed words that too gentle, too soft, and something Emma doesn't want to hear.

It blurs around the edges for a while, nails - her own, she thinks absently - digging into her arms and face until strong hands grab hold of her wrists and pin them to her side. She kicks at nothing, screams out every threat she knows, tried to curl into herself, but each time it just earns her more soothing voices and eventually a second set of hands cautiously join the iron grip on her wrists.

When Emma opens her eyes there's a gangly girl cradling Emma's head gently between her hands. Heavy wet drops fall from the girls face onto Emma's.

"You're crying," Emma croaks out, feeling as hollow as her voice.

"Yeah," she tells Emma in a shaky voice. "It's okay to cry."

"Ain't nothing wrong with a good cry," the older woman agrees, her grey hair spilling down from a messy bun while she continues to makes soothing sounds that only make it _ worse _.

Emma tries to cry, because at this point she'll try anything if it makes the _ pain _ of it all go away, but it gets scrambled up somewhere between her heart and her brain and what comes out of her mouth is a wail - horrible and raw.

"That'll work too," the grey-haired woman assures Emma.

They keep a careful hold on her while she screams, the girl continuing to cry all the tears Emma can't find inside herself.

+

The girl, Ruby, makes Emma feel positively ancient. Ruby's not that much younger than her, but when Emma looks at her she can't help but wonder if she'd ever looked that young, that full of life.

Ruby brings Emma meals and does a great job talking enough for both of them whenever she perches on Emma's bed. She's awkward, a little too blunt, but she never ever looks at Emma like she's falling apart, even when she is.

+

"You don't have to worry," Ruby says in-between spoons of honest-to-god _ applesauce _. "Granny says that no one thinks you're alive. Most of that colony is a crater now, though, and she says we can't tell anyone you came from there because they might think you had something to do with it."

Emma isn't sure what to say to any of that.

Ruby glances briefly over to Dr. Whale who never bothers to hide his eavesdropping and bites at her lip, "It wasn't you, right? I mean…"

"Not me," Emma confirms.

There's noticeable relief on Ruby's face and Emma's half tempted to tell Ruby not to trust people so easily unless she wants to end up like Emma. She stays silent instead, letting Ruby spoon feed her and speculate on frozen pipes and meteor strikes.

+

Granny comes by most days, she doesn't ever say much but she's willing to let Emma cling to her hand on the bad days and pretends it never happened when Emma's ready to let go.

"I've been shot, lied too, and told that reinforcements weren't ever gonna come running over that hill," Granny tells her. "None of that hurt as much as having to keep living when my child wasn't."

Emma stays quiet, watching Granny as she rocks back and forth in her wooden chair. There's a type of peace in the motion and creak of the chair, one that Emma wants to steal and wrap herself up in.

Then again, it could just be the drugs Dr. Whale gives her.

+

Ruby's still unfinished homework is spread out around her, eying it with detest before she sighs dramatically and looks to Emma. "Is that Wren really yours?"

Emma shrugs. Ideas about what is property and what is stolen are… _ complex _.

"I keep telling Granny I don't need to bother with all this- that I'm ready for my own ship," Ruby continues, thankfully not waiting for anything more from her, "but _ she _ thinks-"

She tunes Ruby out, preferring the soft wash of words over their meanings.

+

"Elizabeth _ Mallard _?”

"It's not like you can go around using your name, honey." Granny shrugs, "Besides, I've already had your funds moved into that account so get used to responding to Elizabeth unless you want try your luck as a broke, dead woman."

Emma considers that, frowning down at her new IdentiCard.

"Elizabeth," she tries out with only a minor wince. She'd lost a lot of things over the years, but this is the first time she'd lost her name.

+

Ruby has opinions on every ship in the port, endless faith in an apprentice mechanic named Billy, and an almost perfect memory when it comes to matching ships to captains. She spends a lot of time in Emma's room, pointing out her favorite ships through the tiny porthole and rating off what work Billy had helped do on them, the names of their captains, and then ranking of the captains on a scale of '_ swoon _ ' to ' _ gag, retch- another lech _'.

It's there, watching ships flitter in and out and listening to Ruby lamenting Granny's 'uncool and serious weird' hobby of clobbering together weapons in her spare time that Emma finds out from an off-handed comment that Granny actually _ owns _ the _ Wolf's Den _.

"Just last week she was pestering Billy to help her build a better flash-bang," Ruby scoffs. "Once you're in the two-hundred-decibel range you don't need to really worry about improvement, but what do _ I _ know?."

Emma thinks she should be surprised or shocked by this revelation but she isn't feeling much lately. Still, she makes an absent sound that says she's listening that seems to prompt Ruby to go on.

It's easier with Ruby's voice in her ear, a guiding light to pull Emma back when she's wandered too far away from the here and now.

+

She doesn't know what to make of Billy when she meets him. Emma sees the way how he lights up around Ruby, smiling widely at her like she's hung the stars. She sees the bashful grins and the way he ducks his head.

More importantly, she sees beyond the cheerful chatter and smiles there's something else - something that leads to long silences and cautious glances when Ruby has flounced after something and left the two of them alone in each other's company.

"You're not as nice as you seem," Emma observes.

Billy shrugs, unconcerned. "Is anyone?"

She's tempted to make a token gesture, to make him understand that Ruby should only ever be on the receiving end of his best side when she sees the way he's watching her. Across the promenade Ruby's focus is locked on a menu and she's walked herself right into a wall, scattering a handful of coins on the floor in the process. A painfully fond smile is playing across Billy's face as he watches her.

Emma holds her tongue, for now, content enough that Ruby will never have anything to fear from Billy. Anyone who crosses Ruby, well, she imagines that _ that's _another story.

+

Time keeps moving and Emma makes a point to keep pace with it, Ruby's sheer force of will still urging her on when the weight of Emma's emptiness makes her want to stop.

Granny still comes and goes like a ghost, seemingly content to sit in silence of Emma's room some days and to let the _ click-clack _ of her knitting needles fill the space between them. She brings Emma things from time to time - Elizabeth Mallard's chit card, clothes to replace the prison uniform that had long since disappeared and been replaced with hospital scrubs, her work boots that for some reason now has a taser embedded in the left boot's sole, and on the rare occasion _ oranges _.

Sometimes Emma tries to cry, and on the days that it works it's Granny's soft brown coat that her tears find their way too. Other days Granny drags her out of the tiny hospital room that has become _ hers _ and takes her to the port's range where she shows Emma the complicated toe motions to trigger the taser discharge or has Emma hurl smoke bombs as far as she can while making notes about the distance and subsequent explosion in her tiny journal.

"Aren't grannies supposed to be all about cookies and gossip?" Emma asks, balancing the weight of a crossbow loaded with mini-rockets until her arms burn from the strain and she has to put the crossbow down and shake her arms out.

Granny _ harrumphs _, still writing, "Would you prefer cookies and gossip?"

Emma considers the normality of it, but there's a special kind of peace that comes from strong arms and a good stance that cookies and salacious whispers can't offer.

"Maybe later," she concedes as she brings the crossbow up again, her focus back to the target at the end of the bay.

+

"You've been eyeing the ships for a while now, thinking of leaving?"

Emma startles from her thoughts, turning to find Granny had at some point made herself at home in the chair next to Emma's bed. Her knitting bag is open and spilling its yarn, needles, and the odd IED across her bedside table. She's clearly been there for a while.

"Yeah, I think it's time." Emma frowns, considering, "Was there enough to cover all this?"

Granny eyes her over her knitting but her hands stay busy, "What's all this?"

"The payment," Emma clarifies.

"For?"

Emma finds her self shifting from foot to foot, unsure what to say or if she can manage to actually verbalize anything without tearing down everything she's worked so hard to build back up. She pulls her chit card out of her pocket gesturing towards it, hoping Granny understands.

"Oh," Granny shrugs. "I'm not sure."

"Not sure?" Emma feels a soft dread in her chest. She was stupid - <em>again</em> - things like this don't just _ happen _ and not without a-

"I didn't check your accounts, hon." Granny says like she knows what's happening in Emma's head. "Personally, I'd feel trapped without access to a single thing that was mine, and since it seems like nothing in that little _ Bug _ is yours I figured you having some money in your pocket was the next best thing."

"I've been meaning to ask… my bank just _ gave _ you access to my old account?"

Granny gives her an unimpressed look. "You get to be my age, you learn a few things about getting what you want."

Emma isn't sure what to say to that.

"Tell you what," Granny says turning her attention back to her knitting, "if you're so desperate to pay me - you can. But first, how about you take some time to get yourself together. When you have, _ then _ we can discuss your bill."

"I'm together," Emma assures her.

Granny makes a noncommittal sound, still focused on a row of yarn. "What were you going to name him?"

It's meant to hurt, Emma knows. It's meant to prove a point, a kindness covered in cruelty. A day or two earlier and it might have worked.

"I wasn't going to," she admits in a steady voice. "There's a group on Osiris that places kids with families that can do right by them."

Granny's knitting gets set aside, and a heavy sigh filling the room.

"I can't keep you here," Granny says even though they both know she could if she wanted too. For all she hides it, she's the wolf who managed to carve out a den for herself in Alliance space and lived to tell the tale. "But I also won't take whatever money you've got until I'm damn well ready to."

"I can-"

Granny holds up a hand, stopping her. "It's a big, mean 'verse out there and while I'm sure you've seen your share of it I'm not about to send you out in that busted little ship without knowing you've got some money in your pocket for emergencies."

"I can take care of myself," Emma protests, feeling a thin vein of anger surfacing. "I always have."

"Yeah, and how is that workin' out for you so far?"

It's all Emma can do to stay standing, but she does. "It's fine," with surprisingly steady hands she tucks her new chit card back into her pocket. "Do you know where I can find a mechanic?"

"No need, had the boys tow your ship in and help fix your systems up a while ago." Granny meets her eyes, a challenge there. "I already squared up with them, so there's no use in trying to pay them twice."

Emma bites her tongue, not trusting herself to speak.

"I'm not trying to hurt your pride, girl, I'm just showing you some kindness."

"Well, gee," she grits out, "_ thanks_."

Granny ignores her tone. "The Den is always open to those in need," she tells Emma solemnly. "And if you ever need help and manage to swallow down that pride of yours, you know where we are."

Emma leaves that night, taking what little pride she has left with her.


	2. Chapter 2

Emma's ship runs better than it ever has. But since it's only the second time she's ever flown it, that probably isn't saying much. 

+

She breaks three mirrors and four fingers in the next six months, falls back into some morally grey habits to pay the bills, relieves an Alliance officer of his weapon, drinks more than a _little_ bit too much, and begins to forget what restful sleep feels like. 

"So, status quo," she muses to herself, drunk and curled up in the corner of the loading bay she's designated for sleeping.

+

On a backwater moon she can't remember flying too she finds herself watching as a mother buys a tiny silver bracelet for her daughter and a larger matching one for her. The jeweler engraves them both before handing them over.

"So you'll always be with me," the mother says tapping her daughter's engraved name. "And I, with you."

Emma turns away, forgetting thoughts of pinching her wallet and wanders numbly back to the bar. 

In the morning there's a tiny silver circle engraved with a date Emma can't forget hanging around her neck, just above her swan charm. It feels heavy, even when the gravity plating goes on the fritz and she's left spending two days in Zero-G.

+

She's in a shitty Alliance bar on Constance with her fake IdentiCard out and Elizabeth Mallard's stats staring up at her while she weighs her choices. Having another drink and skip another meal? Or spend another sleepless night with a full stomach? 

Her thought process is derailed when she recognizes the man who sits across the bar from her. He's trying a little too hard to blend in with the crowd, smiling at anyone who comes his way while obscuring his face with feigned casual gestures.

She can't remember his last name, but she remembers his first name, _Ryan_. More importantly, she remembers that his bounty is at least four digits long which would keep _Bug_ in fuel and still leave her with enough money left over for a strong drink and a full stomach for several weeks.

Well, _if_ she doesn't end up getting herself caught in the process. 

She thinks she has a chance though. A bounty hunter wouldn't normally be suspected of being in hiding anything big - not if they expected to keep being able to turn in their catches to government officials responsible for their paychecks. 

As Neal once pointed out - there's no place to hide like right under someone's nose.

She's still rolling over how to go about it when Ryan catches her watching him and makes the decision for her. He winks at her from across the bar, flashing a cheesy smile. 

Emma pounds the rest of her drink and puts on her best smile. She can do this.

+

In retrospect, she maybe should have probably waited until he was _on_ the ship before knocking him out. 

"Nothing to see here," she assures at the tiny crowd that has started to gather and watch as she takes another tug on his leg in the hopes of getting him up the ramp.

+

The closest place with a bounty turn-in station in it is The _Wolf's Den_. 

Emma goes ahead and plots a course to the second closest location.

+

She sweats her way through her undershirt and drops her IdentiCard twice but the officer behind the counter could care less, his eyes glued firmly on the new Mr. Universe's broadcast as he shoves a pile of paperwork toward her. His partner is already leading Ryan away towards the intake.

"Sign by the X's," he tells her glancing up then back to his screen. "If your guy sustained any injuries that might kill him if left untreated between now and tomorrow there's a box on page fourteen that you should mark unless you want to be fined twenty platinum."

+

It gets easier after walking into a bounty station and walking out a free woman the first few times. 

Emma starts to think that maybe Granny's IdentiCard is as good as her aim, or the other way around. This is, naturally when life reminds her not to get cocky she finds herself bleeding and on the wrong end of her own gun behind a bar on Jiangyin. 

"You know not to call for help, right?"

Emma smiles as much as the pain in her face will allow, "Don't have anyone to call."

The man she'd followed out here - Raymond - nods like he understands the extent of the truth in her words. She watches him and he does the same. If not for her gun and the blood on his knuckles she thinks that his crinkled brow and grey hair might make him look like the typical father-character on one of the Core dramas that are always playing in the ports.

"Reputation is half the battle out here which means I'm gonna have to hurt you, miss." He sounds actually apologetic about that. "Do you understand?"

"Yeah," Emma understands. "You're not the first."

+

When Raymond shakes his hand out a drop of red hits Emma's face but she can't be bothered to care.

"An alley is no place for a girl to be left to mend," he tells her, crouching down next to her. "Can I take you somewhere - a hotel? A ship?"

Emma closes her eyes, uncaring if this is a trick. "Port bay six," she slurs. "Look for _Bug_."

+

Raymond's men drop her unceremoniously at the entrance to bay six and under their amused eyes Emma does her best to stand and dust herself off.

"Next time," Raymond warns her with a look.

"You'll never see me again," Emma assures him. She understands this part too, and while the first beating can end with a kindness that it only makes the next one all the worse if the person receiving it hasn't learned enough to avoid it. 

Second beatings are creative, second beatings are not intended to teach so much as to destroy you.

+

She stitches herself up, biting her already raw cheek against the pain. Emma thinks of the baby boy who she'll never get to know and not for the first time she's grateful he never had to know a mother like her.

+

When she's far enough away that she can't see Jiangyin on any of her sensors Emma maneuvers her tiny cot over her least injured arm and drags it into the engine room. With a little bit of effort and only one popped stitch she manages to fit it in the space between the left wall and the engine before collapsing on it.

The _Bug_ is never really as warm inside as the sensors claim it is. Sadly, the list of repairs that need to be done before she could even _consider_ paying to have something like that looked at is ridiculous. Besides, she's been used to carrying a chill in her bones for a lot longer than she's had the _Bug_. 

Still, for some reason tonight that chill is almost unbearable. 

+

She's been tailing a woman through the border worlds for over a week when Granny comes out of nowhere and takes the stool next to Emma at the noodle cart.

She turns and looks down over her glasses at Emma, "You're still alive," she observes dryly. "Rather surprised after some of the things I've been hearing."

Emma blinks. She opens and closes her mouth before settling on "_What?_"

Granny ignores her, gesturing to the cart cook and snapping off her order when she has his attention. 

"You've been taking some stupid risks." Granny clucks her tongue, "Learn from your mistakes, child. There are a thousand ways to die out there - and take it from an old woman - you only get so much luck. That stunt you pulled last week probably used up more than your fair share."

"I…" Emma swallows, feeling unbalanced. "Look, I never thanked-"

"You never _had_ too." She sniffs, "But it wouldn't have gone amiss to let an old woman know you're okay from time to time." 

Granny disappears as quickly as she'd appeared, leaving only nagging guilt for things Emma can't explain blooming in her chest and enough money to cover Emma's noodles and the ones Granny ordered but never touched. 

+

The next bounty she manages to track down doesn't go any better than Raymond had. 

When he does finally goes down, he's already taken more than a little bit of Emma with him. 

Unfortunately, he's not alone and his friends are still standing and Emma's gun is empty. Fortunately, they seem willing to grab him and run. They don't look back, and she watches them go with blood in her mouth, a hole in her side, and a jealously she can't put a name too.

She rips off her shirt, pushing it at the sticky mess of her abdomen and hisses through the pain as she starts limping towards where she hopes her ship is still parked. 

"Learn from this," she tells herself. 

\+ 

By the time she reaches _Bug_, which is _thankfully_ untouched, she's bleed through her shirt and over most of the desert she'd traversed. 

She has choices, she knows. But she also refuses to die just to spite what's left of her pride, so she flips on her coms and sends an S.O.S. to the com setup that either Billy or Granny had programmed into her coms station before she'd left.

+

"I'm startin' to get tired of dragging your ass out of the fire, girl," is the first thing Granny says when Emma wakes up.

Emma ignores her, her eyes locking on the ceiling of what looks like the _Den_'s cargo bay as a sharp stab and even worse _pull_ of what feels like a hot needle and thread work to close up the wound in her side. The familiar bedside manner of Dr. Whale is easy enough to spot. As if on queue he tugs at the next suture more than is probably necessary.

Granny continues, "Just who did you piss off this time, anyways?"

Emma tries to shrug but seizes up halfway through from the pain. "Does it matter?"

The echoing sigh that Granny gives hurts worse than her side.

"One of these days," Granny says quietly, "you're gonna bite off more than you can chew and I'm not going to be there to try to put whatever's left of you back together. Then what, huh?"

Dr. Whale snorts, "Seems like _that's_ her plan."

Emma glares at him and in return he gives her an insincere smile.

"Is that it?" Granny asks in a quiet voice. "You planning on throwing yourself at trouble until trouble wins?"

"Of course not." She says trying hard not to think of the frozen touch of space, the familiar chill that follows blood loss, and how no corner of her tiny shuttle ever feels warm enough. She's seen enough ships set adrift and full of floating dead bodies to know how quickly death comes from a lack of warmth. 

It's hard to be afraid of something that you've been acclimating to all your life.

+

Granny stares her down when Emma tries to pay, only letting up when she tucks the chit away.

"I don't understand," Emma doesn’t yell - but it’s close.

"No," Granny agrees, looking sad to hear that. "I don't imagine you do."

+

It's a terrible thing to wake up one day and realize that you're exactly one year away from the worst moment of your life to date.

People shouldn't be able to assign such aches to dates, Emma thinks. It's suffocating, cruel, and no matter how far you run you can never outrun a calendar.

Emma's got nothing to lose when grabs her gun and lands on Santos. She spends what's left in her bank accounts on a bottle of the best the local bar has to offer, pounding shot after shot until she's ready to let the locals know she's come looking for the number one man on the Alliance's wanted list.

+

She puts up a good fight, because what else can she do. 

"You're the first person in a long time who's stupid enough to try and take me on in my own town." Peter stops, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand and smiling when he sees his own blood smeared on his skin. "First person to make me bleed in even longer."

"Well," Emma shrugs as much as the goons that are holding her will allow, "the way I see it - it was this or therapy."

Peter laughs and she would give just about _anything_ to make that sound stop.

+

Peter looks boyish, downright _angelic_ in the right lights. 

Emma tells him as much, the blood loss and pain long since loosened her tongue up and he laughs like little boys and angels _don't_, stroking the side of her face.

"Oh, Emma," he says, because that had been his first question to her, long before the knives had come out. "I _like_ you."

Just like that he puts away his knives, has Felix cut her down, and Peter offers her a home. A family. 

"You're lost," Peter tells her. "But you don't have to be. I can give you _purpose_."

Finally, it's Emma's turn to laugh.

+

He lets her go, mostly. 

She's still strapped to his table in her dreams, still watching Felix play with his knives as he stands over her, still telling her life story to Peter in exchange for precious moments without any new pain being added to her aching body. 

She wonders sometimes if Felix had ever laid on Peter's table and been offered a home.

+

She finds a quiet port with cheap whiskey and she heals up there. When she's feeling spry enough she wanders into the marketplace, fingers trespassing into pockets and purses until she has enough to buy a tube of dermal cream.

Normally she wouldn't bother, she'd take the scars and _use_ them. But this time there's just so _many_ of them turning her body in a map of pain points and she can't let Peter tie himself to her and make himself at home in her skin when he's already stolen his way into her nightmares.

The cream burns, makes her want to scream and stand under a cold shower until it stops, but Emma does neither. This is as close to a cleansing fire as she'll come by and this is the only way to unchain herself from the curse of a demon who looks like a boy.

+

Emma makes a point of dropping her next bounty - a scumbag who'd been pinching med shipments from the border worlds - off at the _Wolf's Den_.

The moment she's out of her ship she's trying to balance the full force of Ruby throwing herself at her while trying to keep one hand on her prisoner. It's a strange way to experience the realization that Ruby is now almost taller than her, a little less gangly, and had it really been so long since - 

Emma swallows down that thought and tries to figure out how to not look like she's out of her depth.

"I have a bad guy," Emma tells Ruby lamely, dragging the scowling man forward like a prop. "He stole medicine."

Ruby is kind enough to pretend Emma isn't a failure at human interaction, smiling like there's actually a reason to happy about Emma's presence in her grandmother's port.

"No leaving without a goodbye this time," she demands as she treads her arm into Emma's. "Promise me!"

Emma, unable to do anything but nod, agrees.

+

Granny claims that they've settled Emma's bill but Emma has paid more to crash in a dingy port hotel for a night than what Granny deducts from her card for her original stay at the _Den_.

"It's all part of her plan," Ruby informs Emma as she sets down two mugs of cocoa in front of them. "Next, she's going to make you guilt _yourself_ into feeling like you owe it to her to let her judge you about how you dress and how you want to live your life."

"How I dress?" Emma looks down at her clothes, the ragged ATMO pants and tank top could probably do with a wash… She looks from herself to the bright red short-shorts and sheer top Ruby's wearing and has trouble imagining herself blending into the crowds or chasing down a bounty in that particular outfit.

"Yeah," Ruby nods sagely. "I've been dealing with her wacky ideas about how I should dress my _whole life_."

Emma hides what feels like a hint of a smile behind her cup of cocoa. If no one sees it it's easier to pretend it never happened.

+

"You look like shit," Granny tells Emma over the dinner that port security had all but dragged her too, scaring the crap out of her until she realized what was happening.

"I-" Emma isn't sure what to do with her face, "wait, _what_?"

"Told you," Ruby sing-songs smugly. 

"Everyone who dresses like a hooker from a rim port should refrain from commenting," Granny informs Ruby tartly.

+

The thing is, Emma thinks as she observes herself in the long thin mirror in Ruby's room, Granny isn't exactly wrong. 

About her, that is.

Try as she might Emma can't think of a single piece of clothing that she currently owns that wasn't found or stolen from a clothing line out of need. She used to care about this stuff, but hasn't since… 

She shakes that thought away. Now that she's thinking about it she _has_ lost more than one bounty to being denied entrance to various establishments…

"Granny," Ruby says stretching the name out slowly, "is complicated, you know? To be honest, I don't think she'd really care if I walk around naked all day or if you stopped showering, but she does care how people treat us when she's not around to point a gun and get all 'cranky boss lady' at them."

"If you don't want to change - _don't_," Ruby continues with conviction. "But you should know that if I _can_ talk you into something that doesn't look like rags Granny said she'll buy me those new boots from Rama's winter line." She wiggles her eyebrows at Emma, smiling widely. "She doesn't think I can pull this off so it'd _really_ tick her off if she had to buy them _and_ pay for the shipping all the way from Hera."

Emma meets Ruby's eyes in the mirror and returns her smile helplessly. "Boots?"

"The _best_ boots." 

Emma's never had anyone buy her boots, but she remembers the tentative thrill of discovering Granny's additions to hers. If all it takes to make Ruby feel like that is buying some clothes that would also help Emma's job performance… well, she's done a lot more for a lot less.

+

In the back of the fifth shop Ruby drags Emma too there's a second-hand full-body light armor suit that comes with a matching detachable jacket. Emma reaches out, tentatively brushing her fingers across the soft material.

"Oh," Ruby coos, "it's _red_."

Emma nods, more than a little reverently. "With a mark five helmet it'd be ATMO capable, too."

Ruby makes a face at this, but doesn't comment. 

Emma flips the price tag over with hesitant fingers, the whole getup costs six platinum.

"That doesn't really seem like a good price for a coat," Ruby says with an apologetic wince.

"This is more than a coat," Emma reminds her as she picks up the suit, "it's a steal."

+

The suit only needs minor alteration to fit and standing in front of the seamstress' mirror Emma doesn't mind looking at the person she sees in the mirror.

She looks like a real bounty hunter. The strength of her arms stands out rather nicely under the material, the lines of the suit pay flattering attention to her body without being flashy, and best of all she feels safer than she can remember. 

Ruby lets out a low wolf whistle behind Emma. "Turn," she instructs.

Emma rolls her eyes but obeys.

"Bad_ass_."

"It's practical," Emma reminds her with a frown she finds her self having to fake while secretly she preens. 

+

She doesn't know where to go, but she knows she likes taking her evening meals with Ruby and Granny. It's easy enough to rent a room in the _Den_, easier still to pretend she doesn't see the way the knowledge of her staying pleases both of them.

+

There's an old man in the marketplace that smiles at Emma every time he sees her, one hand always raised in a greeting when she passes his shop. Today he has an orange in his hand that he holds out towards her.

Emma frowns but slows to a stop. "For me?"

He nods, "Fresh from Hera. I have many, too many for one old man to eat." 

His eyes are bright and he speaks in an accent from a planet Emma can't quite place, and for some reason, that's enough for her to trust him. She offers him a small smile and accepts the orange and waits for the catch that doesn't come. 

She waits a little longer, just in case.

"Well, thanks," she offers before returning on her path to Granny's office. He nods, waving her off.

Sure enough, watch time she looks back he's standing there looking pleased with himself as he watches her leave. 

Under the pressure of her nail the sweet scent of oranges fills the air.

+

"You look good," Granny says approvingly when she sees Emma's outfit. 

"Ruby's convincing," Emma says earning a smug look from Ruby. 

Her new work pants and tank top are surprisingly soft against her skin, the red jacket still intoxicating enough to make Emma feel daring.

Granny scowls, but she can't quite hide the happiness in her eyes.

+

"Do you know the guy who sells furniture in the market?"

Ruby looks up from her computer, frowning. "You mean Marco?"

Emma shrugs, "Old guy? Rim accent? He hands out free fruit?"

"Yeah, that'd be Marco," Ruby confirms with a wide smile. "He's a sweet old guy. It's a shame about his son."

"His son?"

Ruby nods sympathetically, "He ran off to make his fortune or something - Marco's been waiting for him to come home for about as long as I can remember."

+

Marco's there the next day, another orange held out in his hand like an offering. Emma lets herself wander over once more - this time she stays. She leans against the counter as she peels it, scanning the tiny shop's inventory. Wooden furniture and knickknacks crowd every inch of space.

"I make these," he says proudly, standing taller as he pats the back of an ornate chair.

"They're beautiful," Emma acknowledges with a genuine smile. 

He laughs, pleased as he totters off behind the counter to where a block of wood etched with pencil lines sits. Deft hands pick up a thin knife and slowly begins to dance it across the lines.

For reasons Emma can't understand she stays, watching as the block slowly sheds it's harsh corners and becomes something wispy and vaguely bird-shaped under his hands. When her orange is reduced to peels he stops long enough to produce another orange for from under the counter. Emma eyes it for a while but finally accepts it. 

"You know, actual fruit like this goes for an arm and a leg out here. You'd make a killing if you sold the extra," she points out.

"True," he tilts his head in agreement. "But the company is better this way, yes?"

Emma shrugs, already making quick work of the second orange.


	3. Chapter 3

Ruby and Billy get together while Emma is off on a job in the core. It's the biggest and least surprising news to hit the station in a long time.

"Teenagers," Granny grouses looking resigned to this development. 

+

Emma starts to go pretty far out of her way to return bounties at the _Den_. She never stays very long before the itch to _go, go, go_ sets in, but she makes a point of catching up with everyone. 

She listens to Ruby's latest gossip and admires her latest experiments with hair dye - even when they don't come out quite right. She shares drinks with Granny and they both talk in circles around their real concerns over Ruby and Billy's very young and very strong love. Emma even makes a point to drop by Marco's when she's not in a rush, sometimes bringing back random wood samples from whatever moon or planet she'd been on. Once or twice she even sits at the same bar as Whale and exchanges a few words with the young doctor without having an urge to punch him. 

Sometimes she punches him.

Most importantly though, when Emma leaves she always keeps her promise to Ruby. 

+

"_Strawberries,_" Emma breaths, almost not believing what she's seeing.

Marco just smiles, handing one of the two berries to her. 

"A man today did not have enough money on hand," he says looking his own berry over with pride. "He says to me, I have something I would be willing to trade. When I saw what he had, well, I could not say no."

Emma stays staring at tiny red fruit, hating herself as she moves to hand it back. 

"No, no," Marco says shaking his head defiantly. "Such things are best when shared."

+

Emma's drinking on Triumph when Peter walks into the bar. 

Emma runs, one hand on her gun. Waiting outside of where _Bug_ was left are three familiar faces confirming it had been no accident. 

"Emma," Felix drawls.

She responds with a bullet in his gut before leveling her gun on the first man who moves. She's not the nineteen-year-old who'd thought she couldn't miss, but she is confident enough that at this range she could put three rounds center mass before he could draw.

"I'm leaving now," she tells him. "Whether or not you join Felix is your choice."

Both men step aside, snarls dressed up like smiles on their faces.

"Peter will be upset that you hurt Felix," the smaller man calls after her in a warning.

Emma bares her teeth, "He'll like it less if Felix dies because you didn't get him to a doctor quickly enough."

Something like fear flickers in their eyes, and yeah, they'll let her go if only to make sure Felix's death isn't on their shoulders.

+

Emma remembers being off-put by the sight of the _Den_. She's not sure when that changed, but lately the sight of it today makes her want to smile.

+

Because nothing is ever normal in the _Den_ Emma finds an anxious-looking woman waiting for her outside of Ruby's apartment with a determined look and bag of cherries in one hand.

Emma is seriously beginning to suspect that the _Den_ has an underground fruit and vegetable market.

"Can I help you?"

The woman shifts nervously but presents the bag to Emma, "I need your help."

Emma blinks, casting a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure she's the only one in the hall. Sure enough, it's just her.

"I'm sorry..?"

"You're going to Jiangyin soon and I-"

"And how _exactly_ did you hear that I was going to Jiangyin," Emma asks taking a step closer. "I haven't told _anyone_ that."

"But you did file a departure docket," the woman says shrinking back. She waves meekly with her free hand. "I'm Ashley Boyd - the overseer for bays twelve through eighteen?"

Emma feels a headache coming on but nods and motions for her to continue. 

+

"I hear you're making friends in the _Den_," Granny says as she refills Emma's tumbler with clear liquid of questionable origin.

"I'm making transactions," Emma corrects. 

"Well, in that case I recommend you keeping a lid on these transactions unless you want any of the goods tendered for services to be taxed by the port authorities."

Emma rolls her eyes, "And by port authorities you mean _you_."

Granny shrugs, unrepentant. "I'm not so cold-hearted as to tax acts of friendship, but if it's _just_ business, well…"

Emma digs in her pocket, pulling out a cherry and rolling it across the table petulantly. "I don't know what you're trying to do - but _stop_."

+

Ruby and Billy get in a fight that ends with them breaking up very publicly in the shopping district less than five months after they got together. Emma finds herself staying up all night on her com, halfway across the 'verse but needing to be as close to Ruby as she can get. She doesn't know what to say, feeling too ashamed to admit that the healthiest relationship she'd had ended in her pregnant and facing criminal charges.

"Love is hard and it's pretty rare when it actually lasts," Emma tells her instead. "So if you were in love, be happy you got to have that - no matter how short it was." 

It's not the right thing to say, she knows, but Ruby stares back at her with puffy red eyes and nods like she got something out of that nonsense anyway.

"Also, I left a bottle of whiskey under Granny's couch," Emma continues. "It won't fix anything, but it's great for both broken hearts and broken bones."

Ruby stoops, rummaging around under the view of the camera before holding up a mostly empty bottle.

"Yeah," she says with a grimace, "I kinda found that already. Also, what the hell - this stuff tastes like _shit_, Emma."

+

Emma is genuinely surprised when the next morning she spends more than an hour talking to Billy on her com. She silently bid farewell to her bounty - no doubt he's long gone.

"She worries me," Billy tells her. "She never listens when Granny or I try to warn her to be careful and…" He shakes his head looking confused, "She makes me _scared_."

"She makes you human," Emma corrects him gently. "And yeah, it sucks."

+

Ruby and Billy are back together by the end of the week and Emma finds herself charged twice the normal rate when she docks at the _Wolf's Den_ by Granny.

"Consider it a thank you," Granny tells her in a sharp tone. "After all, every grandmother _lives_ for the day when she finds out her granddaughter is back with her boyfriend by walking in on them half-naked together."

Emma pulls a face, once again cursing the loss of her payday thanks to her adventures into young love. "How is that my fault?"

Granny's eye's narrow, one finger out and waggling at Emma. "I've seen the com logs and I know for a fact that you're the only one either of them talked to that whole week."

+

Emma hits pay dirt on Paquin. She lands only to buy a fuel cell but she finds three drunken men fighting it out in the street, arguing loudly over who each mans thinks is going to betray who first to cash in on the rewards on their heads. Emma settles their argument with the simple application of one of Granny's specially made collapsible batons to the back of their heads. A relieved shop keeper is even kind enough to offer her use of his vehicle to deliver their unconscious bodies and her fuel cell back to her ship.

Back on the _Den_ the first thing Emma does after buying herself a top-shelf drink is to enlist Ruby to help her talk to Billy about her options to refit the _Bug_ to better accommodate it's "passengers".

Well, okay, she enlists Ruby to ensure she gets the lowest price possible. Considering how their little love affair had cost Emma more than a month worth of pay she thinks it's only fair.

+

The itch of being trapped in the _Den_ is worse than ever with no access to the _Bug_ while Billy works on it. Thankfully, the _Den_ is still a weird, weird place full of people like the Shepherd woman who knocks on Emma's hotel room door holding a basket full of tomatoes. 

"Tomatoes have seeds," the Shepherd tells her with a faltering smile, "I heard that seeds make it a fruit."

Emma makes a mental note to finally to get to the bottom of the _Den_'s strange black market that seems to run on fruit.

+

"My ship is being worked on," Emma says with an apologetic shrug when the Shepherd's story is over, "I'm not sure what I can really do about getting your stuff back without transportation."

Astrid deflates before Emma's eyes, looking more hopeless than Emma wants to acknowledge. 

"But," Emma finds herself saying, "I'm sure I could find someone who'd let me borrow their ship."

"Really?"

"I can't make any promises, but I'll try."

The smile the Shepherd gives her is impossibly bright, leaving Emma painfully aware of how much she isn't prepared to let her down.

+

In the end Emma tracks down the Shepherd's stolen items in one of Granny's ships. It's rather anti-climatic what with the thieves all but offering to help Emma load the crates onto her borrowed ship once they realize who the cargo belonged to and what it was for.

"I didn't realize," their leader says with a hangdog expression. "We're not good guys - but we wouldn't knowingly take from the Shepherds. You gotta understand, almost all the kindness and the warm meals we saw as kids came from them…"

Emma knows what he means. It's precisely why she breaks their leader's nose as a farewell.

+

Astrid cries a lot and Emma mostly stands there trying not to drop the heavy load of items in her hands before the crying stops long enough to find out where the rest of the recovered goods should go.

+

In a matter of weeks Billy has transformed most of Emma's tiny cargo hold into sturdy holding tank - complete with a crude but effective waste management station. Emma admires the work with honest praise, she's paid far more for far less from full-fledged mechanics.

"Wait, so did they use your restroom before?" Ruby asks as she pokes at the newly installed bars curiously. The world of bounty hunting still seems to fascinate her, doubly so ever since Granny and Emma had joined forces over dinner last month to dash Ruby's plans to join Emma as a partner when she turned nineteen.

"No, it's way too risky to get them up, untied, and to the bathroom and back without anyone getting hurt." Emma rolls up a sleeve, displaying to a long jagged scar on her arm, "Learned the hard way." 

Ruby frowns, scrunching up her nose. "You mean they…?"

"Clean up was a bitch." Emma lies with a straight face, watching Ruby's eyes widen in horror. "Part of the job, though. The _Bug_'s only about forty feet so the smells travel _fast_."

Somewhere, Granny is probably laughing.

+

On Muir Emma runs, quite literally, into another bounty hunter. Technically he's an Alliance tracker if the patch on his jacket is to be believed, but that's just the glorified salary version of her job. 

In the confusion and resulting collision, they both end up sitting on their asses in the middle of the road and watching as their bounty disappears into the crowd.

Emma curses and he laughs quietly and offers her a hand up.

He's a little odd she thinks, too gentle as he helps her up to really make Emma think _Bounty Hunter_ but he's clearly competent enough to have earned that patch. 

He's handsome too. Enough so that when he looks her over and smiles appreciatively at Emma she smiles back instead of decking him for botching her bounty.

+

"Graham," he introduces himself over drinks that have noticeably been watered down by the shifty man behind the bar. Emma doesn't much like the weak drink in her hand but she the way Graham looks at her like he's appraised her and is pleased with his findings. Under his gaze she feels stronger, capable, maybe a little bit more dangerous. 

She calls herself Elizabeth and takes him back to her ship when the bartender announces last call. 

There he laughs at her tiny cot but doesn't complain about it at all when she pushes him down on it. In the dim light of the engine room Emma takes in all she can about him. How he's carrying a wispy and waxy scar as wide as her palm over his heart, how he wears moderately-expensive yet carefully mended clothes, and the loneliness in his eyes that Emma recognizes all too well. 

She likes how he hisses when she uses her nails like he isn't sure how he feels about the sensation even as he arches up into her touch. She doesn't, however, like how every time he touches her, he does so like she's something breakable.

Emma can deal with other things, but not that. 

She takes a handful of his hair and _pulls_, yanking his head to the side so she can lean in and whispers lowly into his ear until he throws caution into the wind and holds her like she's trying to run and fucks her like he means it. 

+

He has a lousy sense of humor, but long after they've parted ways Emma finds herself smiling at his stupid jokes.

+

"I know that look," Marco tells her with a smug nod. 

"_No_," Emma says with a finger raised in warning, "you don't."

He snorts, returning his attention to the gears of the clock on his workbench. "Young people, so conveniently they forget that the passions they feel have also burned inside of us."

+

She and Graham run into each other again. 

+

And _again_. 

+

Emma admits to herself that it isn't a coincidence when she finds herself absently looking over the wares of a jewelry stall outside of a very specific bar in the Skyplex that Graham had mentioned he'd be swinging by. 

When she finally catches sight of him, her heart thumps traitorously in her chest and her lips curl up. She watches greedily as he stalks through the crowds. His eyes are searching - not for trouble, not for a bounty - for her. On a whim she stays still, waiting until his eyes find her. 

She raises an eyebrow, canting her head to the side and he gives her a funny little smile back. 

Emma turns, dashing into the crowds and slipping through the people there. Behind her there's warm laughter and polite excuses and apologies being issued to the people she'd jostled as he follows.

+

She knew he was good at his job, but she's surprised with just how quickly he tracks her down. She stretches, enjoying the way his eyes drink her in.

"Took you long enough," she teases.

He mock growls, swooping in to kiss her, and _oh_, if all it takes is a little chase to get kissed like that Emma is going to start improving her cardio routine ASAP.

+

"You're popular lately," Granny says apropos of nothing. "Two coms in one week - why, if I didn't know any better I'd think you had a social life."

Emma drains her cup and pours herself another of Granny's moonshine, sinking down into the overstuffed chair in the corner and refusing to rise to the bait. Granny allows it, only commenting after her fourth refill.

"You drink too much," she tells Emma, frowning down at the tablet on her desk. "Does this young man know how much you drink?"

Emma toasts Granny with a tight smile, "I'll need to drink a _lot_ more if you want me to talk about that with you." 

If Emma calls it a night and puts her bottle back in Granny's desk drawer after that, it doesn't have to mean anything. 

+

She's woken up at an ungodly hour by Granny bursting into her room.

"Wake up," she commands with a mischievous smile.

Emma groans, pulling a pillow over her face, "Go 'way."

Granny _hrumph_s, "Is that any way to talk to the person who's going to let you try out my new laser pistol?"

"Laser pistol?" She pulls her pillow down enough to squint over at Granny, "A _real_ laser pistol?"

The smug look on Granny's face only grows, and _damnit_ Emma had plans to sleep most of the day.

+

"Seriously," Ruby insists. "You can tell me _anything_. In fact - I wouldn't be opposed to hearing sweaty, _sweaty_ details about whoever has made you smile like that."

"There's nothing to tell," Emma insists, hearing the lie in her own words.

Ruby rolls her eyes and crosses her arms, "Right, so your hair just magically gets all nice and _curley_ the night before you head out of port."

Emma lifts her chin defiantly, "Maybe it does."

+

He calls her Elizabeth, sometimes going so far as to play around with variations like _Liz_ and _Lizzie_ as though it might get a rise out of her. It does, but not one she lets him see. 

Telling him the truth would be foolish, she knows. 

+

They split a bounty on a mark in Three Hills. They're both sore, both a few days past needing a shower, both still humming with adrenaline when she thinks _fuck it_ and shoves Graham into an alley while they're still four blocks from her ship. She kisses him quiet, pushing him forward until his back meets the wall.

"You reek," she tells him when they stop kissing long enough to gasp for air.

Graham throws his head back, laughing low and happy, both hands pulling her towards him.

"Were you planning on having me here?" He rumbles with a lazy nod towards the end of the alleyway. "Anyone could see."

"Let them," Emma tells him. "Unless, of course, you don't think you can't manage-"

She can't finish her sentence, not with him growling and hefting her up so her legs are around his waist and he's spinning them until she's the one pressed against the wall. He kisses her, his teeth nipping at her lips as he pulls away.

"I can manage," he assures her. "And I'll prove it to you - back at your ship, as many times as you want."

Emma wants to protest, but there's something about the way he's smiling at her that makes her want to give him anything he asks for.

"Fine," she concedes. "But only because I don't have any condoms on me at the moment."

From his grin, he has at least one on him but Emma is content to let him lower her feet to the floor and lead her by the hand out of the alley.

+

They cram themselves into _Bug_'s tiny shower and with callused hands he washes them both in between lazy kisses. Emma closes her eyes, throwing her arms over his shoulders and enjoying the sensation. She's tired, so tired and the mostly warm water is soothing.

"When's the last time you slept?" 

Emma hums noncommittally, all but melting as he starts to wash her hair.

He chuckles, kissing her temple and then tilts her head back gently under the spray as his fingers comb out the suds.

+

"Emma," she confesses later that night when she can't take another moment as Elizabeth.

Graham hums a sleepy question, curling into her and nosing at her face lazily.

"My name," she admits with a nervous heart. "It isn't Elizabeth, it's Emma."

Graham goes from lazy to alert. 

"Emma?" He asks with a frown.

She nods, gathering her courage, "Emma Swan." She knows people in their field aren't there because of their high levels of trust, but she has slept with Graham at her back enough to trust him with this.

What he chooses to do with the information, well… Emma's the closest to the pile of clothes that contains their weapons.

"Emma," he repeats as though he's testing her name for hidden dangers. Complicated emotions rush over his face, disappearing from view as he pulls her forward and hides his face in the center of her still bare chest. "_Emma Swan_."

Her nervous hands reach out and she finds herself running them through his hair and down his neck in what she hopes are comforting motions.

"I'm sorry I lied to you," she offers, unsure of her footing, unsure of what that look on his face means. "But I had a good reason for it."

"I believe you," he offers in a hoarse voice. He crawls up her body, capturing her lips by force. If he's a little faster than normal and he clings a little tighter to her afterward Emma is willing to ignore it.

+

There's a tiny golden star hanging from a ribbon that's been tied it to _Bug_'s console. 

It shows up somewhere between Graham mocking Emma's version of breakfast in bed (two ration bars on her tiny cot) and his kiss goodbye that turned into a highly unprecedented third round of morning sex. 

She remembers seeing the star before, on display at a trinket cart in a busy Skyplex. She remembers trying to act casual, turning it over in her hands again and again as she tried to convince herself she was just here by chance and _definitely_ not two days off course simply to take a chance at running into Graham. Emma pokes at the star with a finger as she warms up the engine, watching as it rocks back and forth while the _actual_ stars are reflected in its sheen. 

She wonders if maybe it's time she got around to cleaning out the piles of scrap metal and pallets of emergency rations that have crowded the tiny living quarters since the day she first stole the ship. There's room enough in there for a small mattress she thinks, and she could maybe even hang the little star over the tiny porthole in there if she wanted.

+

Granny gives her a double-take on her first day back before scooping her up into her arms and reminding Emma of just how deceptively strong the old woman still is.

When she releases Emma she frames both her hands around her face and positively beams at her. Emma focuses her attention firmly on the floor tiles and tries to ignore the burning in her face.

"Your happiness," Granny tells her firmly, "has been a long time coming."

+

Ruby is involved with something that looks impossibly complicated on her screens when Emma finally tracks her down. It's a rare enough thing to find Ruby is so engrossed in her work that she tunes out the rest of the 'verse so Emma grabs a bottle of Scotch and makes herself at home in an empty chair on the bridge and watches as Ruby turns meaningless rows of symbols into something that looks just as meaningless to Emma but makes Ruby crow in delight on occasion.

There is a jealous part of Emma that wants to keep Ruby's brilliance and smiles to herself. As she watches Ruby she thinks that maybe - just _maybe_ it wouldn't be so terrible if Graham could witness this too.

+

"There's some people I'd like you to meet."

Graham looks up from his tablet with a frown, "People?"

"People," Emma feels suddenly self conscious, "_my_ people. Kinda."

There's a shadow in Graham's eyes again, the one that has been haunting him since she stopped lying to him.

Maybe it's too early. She freezes, the realization that this was too much when she doesn't know much about him other than his job and that he reports directly to a woman of considerable influence in the Core. Clearly she's an idiot and there never _could_ be a right time for this because maybe-

"I mean, you don't have to-" she amends, "I just thought you might like Ru-"

Graham short circuits her thought process with a fierce kiss that sucks the oxygen from the room.

"Shhh," he hushes her, "tell me about them later."

It's almost like he's _begging_ her and torn between confusion and lust Emma nods dumbly, content to try and make him as breathless as he makes her.

+

Emma feels almost hunted from the strange and hungry way Graham's eyes track her movement around the ship in the odd moments when he isn't pressed into her side the next day. They don't talk much, in fact it seems impossible to fit any words into the sparse space between them. 

It's not until he's leaving, flying away towards his next job while Emma goes towards hers that she realizes she'd never gotten a chance to tell him about Ruby or Granny. Maybe it's for the best, after all Emma still isn't sure exactly how to describe them with words - she only knows the way they make her feel. 

Warm. Fussed over. Safe. 

A lot like Graham, actually.


	4. Chapter 4

Emmas coms are more silent than normal in the following week. The silence that fills the _Bug_ leaves room enough for doubt to crawl its way into Emma's soul and take hold. 

It's still too cold, but there's plenty of money in her accounts that can buy bottles and shots that trick her body into thinking it's warmer than it is.

Graham still sends waves from time to time, but always from scrambled com towers and he's always quick to sign off. Emma pretends not to notice, unsure even after all her years of experience what the procedure is when asking if you're about to be thrown away. 

+

She wraps two fingers around the tiny golden star that still hangs where he'd left it - far enough below the vid cam that she knows he won't notice it as she accepts his wave. She startles at the sight of him, fingers clenching hard around the star.

"Is everything okay?" She hates the way she sounds, hates the tremble that she can't quite purge from her voice.

Graham smiles but even the low definition of his video feed can't hide the fact that he's crying. Emma feels caged as she watches him, hoping desperately he'll let her out and tell her a name that she can aim her anger at. _I can be useful to you,_ she wants to tell him, _let me prove it._

"No," he smiles sadly, "things aren't great right now."

_Truth._

"I'm sorry," Emma offers. "Can-"

Graham shakes his head, "Right now I need to put as much distance between you and me as possible."

"I understand," Emma lies, watching another tear fall down his cheek with a helpless rage. 

+

Emma spends her longest stretch at the _Den_ to date. 

It's odd, but she doesn't feel the itch to leave at all. In fact, no place in the 'verse feels like it could compare to an overstuffed chair and the rhythmic _click-click_ of Ruby's keystrokes.

Ruby, who's kind in ways Emma worries she was never built to be, doesn't say anything about how Emma has basically started living in her living room chair or how the closest she comes to drinking water is vodka or the clear moonshine she stole from granny. She doesn't nag Emma about eating real food like she normally does and even going so far as to buy some of Emma's preferred brand of ration bars to stock her kitchen with.

On nights when Emma slips off to sleep in the chair and doesn't return to her hotel room, she wakes up covered in a soft red quilt.

+

It's purely by chance that Emma catches sight of Graham's face on one of Ruby's monitors. At first it feels like a dream, but a sharp pinch to her side confirms she's awake. 

_Alliance Tracker Found Mutilated_ the article says and Emma has to slam her hands over her mouth to prevent the sounds she fears will bubble over.

She silently stands on mostly steady feet and reads the sparse information that includes descriptions of injuries she will undoubtedly be seeing in her nightmares about and a distant moon she's never thought twice about. Emma reads the article a second, third, fourth time - carefully committing every word to memory by sheer force of will. 

Ruby is still so engrossed enough in her work that she doesn't notice anything. Not Emma's shaking hands or her slipping out the door.

The walk back to Emma's hotel is longer than she remembers.

When she finally gets the door shut behind her it's all she can do to tear her clothes off, leaving a trail towards the tiny restroom. She climbs in the shower, doesn't bother shutting the curtain, and proceeds to spend all of the water rations she'd saved up over the years. 

She stands there, numbly shaking under a blistering assault of hot water as terrible sounds stumble past her lips. It's wordless noises at first, but eventually she's screaming and Emma can't remember how to stop. She's not even sure if she'd survive it if she stops.

+

She's not screaming so much as whimpering when the water runs out. 

She still standing naked in the shower while it asks for the nth time if she'd like to purchase more water rations when Granny comes gliding through her hotel room like she knew exactly where to find her - like she knew she was needed.

Emma's heard the whispered stories of Granny and her band of misfits during the war - showing up when all hope was lost and leaving no man behind. Some habits people can't shake.

"Oh, honey," Granny says, pulling Emma to her feet. "Oh, _sweetheart_, I'm here."

+

Granny spends the night sitting up in Emma's rental bed and holding Emma to her chest like a child. 

"I want to tell you that it's all going to get better," Granny tells her, one hand gently combing through Emma's hair.

"But you can't," Emma knows.

She feels more than sees Granny nod, "I wish I could, though."

+

Two days later Emma is collecting printouts on Peter when they are snatched out of her hand by an irate Granny.

"No," she seethes. 

Emma says nothing, but Granny must see something she doesn't like. She stomps forward and grabs hold of Emma by her chin and forces Emma to look her in her eyes.

"That man was one of the finest trackers that ever lived and he got taken down _real_ easy like," Granny says in a level whisper. "You're good, honey, but he was better, and I won't let you throw your life away just for some foolhardy idea that you're finishing his work or avenging him."

"I'm not-"

"Bullshit," Granny snaps, giving her a shake. "If you really believe that look me in the eyes and tell me that he'd want you on this fool's errand."

"I don't care what he wants," Emma smiles, the stretch of her face feels like a wound. "He's dead," Her smile is too big, too heavy, and suddenly she's laughing and laughing and-

_Crack._

Emma stills, once hand reaching up to cup the side of her stinging face.

"People _die_," Granny hisses, the sheer presence of her sends Emma stumbling back a step. "I _know_ it hurts. I _know_ it's easy to blame them but none of that gives you the right to use the dead as an excuse to do something stupid - especially not when it could hurt someone else." 

"But-" Emma struggles for the right words but none come and she's left thinking of the baby she'd never met -the one she still worries she's never properly mourned. She thinks of her birth certificate where her parents are both designated as FNU LNU. She thinks until she's dizzy with it.

"People keep _leaving_ me," she tries to explain. “They leave.”

"Baby girl, you can’t help that but you sure as shit can use it," Granny insists. "Do what they couldn't and learn how to stay - even when it's hard."

+

Ruby flutters around the edges of Emma's awareness that week, never getting too close and never standing between Emma and an exit. She offers an endless supply of hot cocoa and warm blankets for Emma to chase the chill away with. On the days when the chill is more than the cocoa and blankets can battle Ruby moves her computers near the couch and sorts through her work with Emma's head cradled on her lap. 

"If you need anything," Ruby offers, one hand absently petting Emma's hair, "_anything_ \- I'm here."

"Actually," Emma says, unable to recognize her own voice.

+

"I think you should skip this one," Ruby warns her. "I looked into this Peter guy like you asked, but honestly, all I'm hearing is that he's _scary_ evil and leaves even the big named Bounty Hunters shaking in their boots."

Emma isn't afraid of evil men. Evil men can fall and bleed just like the good ones. 

"Send me all of his info," she stops Ruby's protests with a hand on her arm. "Granny doesn't need to know about this one, okay?"

Ruby opens and closes her mouth but finally seems to find her voice. "No."

Emma blinks, "No?"

"I don't want you to go looking for this guy, Emma. He's… he’s _dangerous_."

"You're describing half the guys I drag in h-"

Ruby stands up a little bit straighter, but it doesn't hide the fear in her eyes. "I said _no_. If you want the information, you're gonna have to take it from me." She watches Emma, leaning slightly back and away from Emma like she's expecting to get-

_Oh, god._

"Fine," Emma croaks, reminded once more that there are always new depths left for her to sink too. She steps back from Ruby, unwilling to look her in the eyes. "You win. Now get out of my room." 

The sheer amount of relief on Ruby's face makes her turn away, listening as Ruby leaves the room.

"I'm doing this for you," Ruby says like that means something. "I know you can't forgive me right now, but later, you're gonna be able to look back and understand why I did this."

Emma ignores her, grabbing the first bottle she finds in the wet bar as she heads for the hanger. 

+

The golden star gets ripped down after the second bottle goes dry, scattering to the floor and rolling under the console just out of Emma's reach. 

It's Billy that finds her, Billy who smiles like a puppy around Ruby and who can fix any ship that ends up in his hanger. He can't fix Emma's bloody hands though, or the fingernail she'd torn off while trying to rip out the console in a desperate rage. He stands very still before he moves slowly are carefully to pull her away from her attempts at destruction. Emma allows it, letting him lead her down _Bug_'s ramp and to his office. She watches as he bandages her up with practiced hands, wincing at the pain she can’t quite feel. 

"Drink," he coaxes her holding out a bottle of water. When she's done he herds her gently back towards her cot on the _Bug_. 

As soon as she's in bed he leaves her long enough to root around the mini first-aid kit in the bathroom. Pain killers join his water bottle on the floor next to her cot.

"Don't ever die on her," Emma warns him when he turns to leave. "If you really love her, you'll outlive her so she never knows what it feels like."

"Of course," Billy promises, looking like he means every word of it. He pauses, studying her. "Did you love this guy?"

"I think so," Emma admits, hating how the truth rips her open even more. "If not, I think I could have."

+

In the morning Billy shows up in the hanger with coffee - spiked - and presses a familiar star into the gauze that covers her palms. The ribbon is gone, but in its place there's a long thread of carbon fiber tipped with clasps. 

"If you wanted," he gestures to her neck. "I could help you. If you wanted," there's a kindness in his voice that is normally reserved for Ruby. 

Emma wonders for a moment when she'd earned such a thing from him. She holds the necklace out to him and pulls her hair up with aching hands as he carefully secures it. 

The star lays above the swan charm Neal had given her and right below the silver circle. For a second they all feel a little like they're dragging her down, forcing her to remember the mistakes she was too stupid to avoid.

"Learn from this," she murmurs, touching the star where it lays.

+

Ruby becomes a ghost after that. The only proof Emma has that she's even still on the port is occasional glimpses of black and red hair she spies through the crowds. More than one evening is spent trying to figure out how Ruby manages to always know when she's near. 

Maybe Granny was wrong about Ruby's future as a bounty hunter.

+

"You look tired," Marco tells her with a frown the next time she sees him.

"I am."

He looks at Emma too long for comfort, finally nodding and letting that conversation die.

+

Emma does what comes easiest, and in the heavy wake of Ruby's absence, she flees.

She doesn't call it that most days, though. Sure, she's chasing a ghost of a bounty known only as the Mad Man and sure, it's taking her far, far away from the _Den_\- but that's _work_. It's what she does.

It's the first time she's broken her promise to Ruby about goodbyes.

It's not her fault, she reasons. You can't say goodbye to someone you can't find.

+

She's so far past the middle of nowhere that for the first time in years Emma actually finds herself having to rely on the _Bug_'s systems to figure out where she is and where she can find a new compression coil and a fresh fuel cell. The port she ends up at is surprisingly empty which only makes her feel even worse when she spends too long looking down at her tablet and runs straight into another person. She's in enough of a rush that the force of their collision sends the well-dressed man careening back and onto the floor with a shocked yelp.

Somewhere in-between her apologies being kindly brushed off and her noticing the bag full of broken pottery that looks like it was most likely a teapot before she came along she makes a decision. If he won't accept compensation then he's going to have to accept that she's not leaving someone who looks like they're fresh from the Cortex alone in the middle of a rather questionable port all by himself. The bounty she'd been chasing had been a fool's errand anyway - the idea of finding a man of unknown description and crimes who's recognizable only by his apparent penchant for hats and the scar on his neck is a _bit_ more daunting than she'd originally thought. 

"I'm fine," he assures Emma again as he allows her to help him to his feet. 

"Yeah, but you never know what kind of trouble you'll run into in ports like this." She regrets the words, worried his pride might be wounded by her insinuation, but with relief Emma notices his speculative frown towards the group of men hovering around the entrance to the docks. It's as close to an opportunity as she's gonna get, so she pounces.

"If I can't pay for your teapot at least let me at least make sure you get back to your ship without anyone breaking anything else."

"Well," he says with a prim tug at his waistcoat and another glance at the men, "if you _insist_."

+

"That's some ship," Emma knows she's gawking but she can't help it. 

"Top of the line," he says with a smile that does little to hide his obvious boredom with the subject.

"Not really surprised," she motions towards his outfit, the fine fabrics and colors broadcasting his wealth as easily as the ship. "And from the way you aren't bothering to hide any of this, I'm guessing you're not from this sector."

He considers her, sharper than she'd expected to see from him and cocks his head to the side looking almost amused. "Are you planning to rob me?"

Emma rolls her eyes, "Should I be?"

"Well," he says with exaggerated slowness, "You _could_. But I must warn you that you won't be invited to tea if you rob me."

"Tea?" She finds herself smiling, and for once it doesn't hurt. 

He inclines his head, a smirk playing on his lips. "Oh, do they not _have_ tea in the sector you're from?"

+

His name is Jefferson and when she looks at him Emma can't help but feel like he's more story than man. 

There's something inherently tragic about him that she can't quite put her finger on. He reminds her of ships left to rust away in junkyards and laser pistols that live on the hips of men who will never touch their trigger unless they're showing off. Emma is more than a little tempted to push Jefferson down (again), maybe mess him up until she can get a better look at what else might be hiding.

But that would be impolite, and while no one ever bothered to stick around long enough to teach her manners, Emma's managed to pick up a few on her own. 

+

A cup turns quickly enough into a second pot of tea, and a second pot of tea leads to Emma feeling oddly content and still deeply curious about Jefferson and his elaborate and incredibly strange ship. 

He's obviously a passionate man with an intelligence that's hard to ignore. Sweet, if a bit brash and every now and then there's a hint of something deeply broken in the way he laughs. A hint of confusion in the way he speaks of other people. 

The reminder that Emma isn't the only lonely or broken person in the world is reassuring in it's own sick way. 

Jefferson is not something she thinks she'd want to keep - she suspects his damage and hers aren't compatible in ways that end well - but perhaps he could be something she wouldn't mind borrowing for a night or two.

"You're a bit of a cynic, aren't you?" he asks, pouring another cup of murky tea for her. 

Emma laughs, louder and much more bitter than she'd meant too.

He looks down at the empty pot in his hands, and for a second Emma thinks she sees anger - _real_ anger - but then it's gone. The tiny voice in the back of her head that made her run towards _Bug_ so long ago suggests she gets gone too. 

Jefferson seems to know what she's thinking, standing abruptly and holding out a placating hand. 

"Apologies," he offers. 

"For what?" Emma puts on her best smile, "Either way, it's getting late and I-"

"I probably should have told you earlier," Jefferson's face is pinched and he's avoiding her eyes. "I have a touch of space sickness." 

Emma rubs absently at her head, "Of _course_ you do." It makes sense in that way where Emma wishes it didn't.

Taking carefully telegraphed steps Jefferson moves until there's a clear path from her to the exit hatch of the _Cheshire_. He stays where he is, hands still held up and his eyes carefully down and away from her in an obvious show of submission. 

She stays where she is as well, still unsure of how to proceed.

"I have a very minor case - my temper _is_ quick - but I can assure you that I can control myself and have been doing so for many years. I'm no threat to you." He gestures one hand towards the hatch, "If you leave, I wouldn't think of trying to stop you." 

Emma knows about space sickness, all spacers do. The 'verse is a cruel place - cruelest to those who've spent too much time alone with her, twisting their minds up until nothing is left of them but a cautionary tale. Emma's seen more than her share of the victims in various ports and planets over the years: the burnt-out pilots who believe the 'verse speaks to them, hunched figures muttering into the shadows and the violent and hollow-eyed people who never say anything at all. 

"You do seem rather… lucid," she allows. "I wasn't aware there was a treatment."

"There isn't, but there are early detection systems that have been put in place in the Cortex for a while now," he speaks slowly, sneaking careful glances at her while he chooses his words. 

While almost everything about this situation irks her, nothing he's said is a lie. 

"That," she says as her hand still hovering over her holster, "really should have been your opener when you invited me for tea."

Jefferson's jaw clenches and a flare of temper flashes behind his eyes. "Would you have agreed to tea if I had?"

"Doesn't mean it's okay to pull something like that."

Jefferson scoffs, face contorting in disdain but otherwise he remains silent. 

"Why _did_ you invite me here?"

"You might not have guessed this, but it's not every day that someone oh so _gallantly_ offers to spend more time then they have to with me," he smiles, too many teeth on display for it to look genuine. "Then again, it's not every day that I get bulldozed by a scowling woman either, so," he shrugs. 

"I apologized for that," Emma points out.

"You did," he sends an irritated look towards her hands. "Stop hovering and draw, already. Hopefully, it will calm you down."

Emma doesn't need to be asked twice, drawing and keeping her gun tucked low and tight to her side. She used to extend her arms like the gunslingers in the vids do, but that was back when she still cupped her left hand under the butt of her pistols. Back when her aim was more luck than the skill that she's carefully honed in Granny's range and polished on backwater moons. 

The too sharp memories of her elbows being driven down by a well-placed shove by Felix is a lesson she'd taken to heart. She still has dreams from time to time where her balance is swimming and her grip is loosening enough that her gun is knocked out of her hands. She lived, though. For whatever little that was worth, she lived and she had been able to limp away missing only her pride, some fingernails, and a sense of security.

She's no genius - not Ruby with her computers, not Billy with his engines, not Granny who came out of the worst moments of the war alive and kicking. She's just Emma. Emma, who remembers how long it takes to grow back fingernails, who knows the sting of dermal gel, and who tries her best to learn from her mistakes.

"Feel better?" Jefferson asks with what seems to be genuine curiosity. 

"Eh," she shrugs. "So _this_ was all you… what? Seeing how long it'd take me to notice?" 

"Mostly it was a lonely man enjoying the attention of a beautiful woman and thinking she might be able to help him."

"_Help_?" Emma smirks, "Never thought I'd have to spell this out to anyone, but I'm not a companion, buddy."

"One would only need to _look_ at you to figure that out," Jefferson rolls his eyes, every pore of his body all but screaming his current opinion of her intelligence. 

Emma's used to feeling like she was found wanting, but it's the first time in a long time someone who _doesn't_ have a gun trained on her made her feel that way.

"Don't be like that," he snaps before she can figure out what to say. "Companions have power, but none that's effective when the jabberwockies come calling."

It takes all her effort not to ask what that might mean, but Emma manages. "You said you needed help?" She grits out.

Jefferson nods, deflating a little, "I have a daughter. Well, I _think_ I have a daughter. You seem to be a capable woman, a bounty hunter if the rumors are true, and I was thinking perhaps you might be swayed by money or knowledge of noble deed done to help me distinguish what is real and what is…" he trails off, a cold smile in place, "_madness_."

Emma rolls his words around in her head, stopping more than once on the rumors bit. "You're not lying," she allows.

"I wouldn't lie," he assures her, "but I'm also very aware that I once spent a month sewing frantically because I thought if I perfected the craft I could travel beyond the black instantly."

For a moment they both stand in silence, watching, waiting. It takes her a moment to realize he's waiting for her move.

"Sit," she says, gesturing with her muzzle towards the couch. "I'm not promising anything except pain if you piss me off, but for now - I'm listening."

Jefferson closes his eyes briefly, his hands falling down and his shoulders sagging as he exhales in palpable relief. With still careful movements he makes his way to the nearest chair, perching on the edge.

Emma stays standing. "You _think_ you have a daughter?"

"Yes."

She cocks her head to the side, watching. "You're from the core, right? Why not just pull your files or ask someone to look it up?"

He winces, "That's … complicated."

"It always is."

"Well, I'm fairly certain that if she is real then the people behind her abduction are affiliated with the very authorities I'd be going too to find my answers."

"Oh, _obviously_."

"I've seen them," he insists, moving closer to the edge of his seat and then stilling when he sees her stiffen in response. "I've seen them - more than once - and they always carry Alliance credentials with them. They wear blue gloves and-"

"Wait," Emma shakes her head. "The help you need I can't offer, pal - this is clearly a waste of both of our times." 

She's already backing away, eager to leave but she stills when he calls out her name in protest.

"What did you call me?" She feels numb all over.

Jefferson's eyes twitch. "I called you-"

"Emma," she finishes for him, her hand tightens around the grip of her pistol. "Funny, but I remember introducing myself as _Elizabeth_."

A tense moment passes in silence.

"Would you believe me if I told you that I've been looking for you, Emma?" His face says he doesn't expect her belief, but he continues anyway, "Imagine my surprise when I heard that someone matching your description had been doing the same."

Emma feels her blood run cold, "You've been _looking for me_?"

Jefferson cocks his head to the side, one finger waving in her direction, "Whatever you're thinking - it's not that." His jaw clenches, "I know it's unlikely that you-"

She cuts him off with a harsh laugh and a cold smile. "What is it you _think_ you know?"

"I know _things_," Jefferson moves to step forward but stops and reconsiders his actions and stays where he is. "Perhaps too many things." 

Emma feels vaguely sick to her stomach, watching as his expression does another about-face and suddenly he's looking at her like he desperately needs her to understand him. She takes a deep breath and takes a cautious step towards him, her muzzle still trained on him. She takes another, and another, until she's standing inches away from him. He meets her eyes, and she watches him search them for whatever he's looking for.

Emma reaches out, gently touching the side of his face and pretending not to notice how he flinches away from her when her hand moves to rest over his perfectly quaffed scarf. She pulls it away from his neck slowly, watching as an ugly line of scar tissue is revealed. 

"Listen-" he swallows, his adam's apple bobbing and pulling at the scar.

"You said I was looking for you, too," she muses as she releases the scarf. It falls to the floor between them. 

Jefferson remains silent, watching her like it physically pains him.

"One last time," Emma says in a whisper, "how do you know my name?"

His smile has the potential to be heartbreaking, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." 

"Wrong answer," Emma lifts her arm and shifts her index finger from its resting place and with her thumb, she pushes the hammer and lets the gun spin in her hand with a practiced ease. The butt catches Jefferson upside his temple before he can protest.


	5. Chapter 5

Against her better judgment Emma spends almost half an hour pacing over Jefferson's unconscious body. She rips through all the accessible rooms and the main computer on his ship but comes back without any of the answers she needs. There is no mention of her in his ship's database. His com logs are few and far between, mostly waves to and from various ports and none of the calls lasting for more than a few minutes. The useless information she finds - the dinnerware set for one, the endless courses that show him never staying in one place long - they scream of a loneliness she understands.

She spends most of her time in his ship's common room, rooting through pile after pile of papers, most of them maps. The room is well cared for, more signs of use than the other rooms and the whole area framed by an ostentatious wall of windows that stare out into the heart of the 'verse. From her own short time standing before the wall of glass Emma thinks maybe she understands the origin of some of Jefferson's madness. 

She looks down to where he stills lays, a bruise already blooming on his temple. One hand is curled helplessly towards his chest where earlier her boot had connected to deliver the burst of current that had solved the problem of him starting to rouse.

"Who are you?" she demands of his unconscious body. 

Emma doesn't bother waiting for a response that won't come, already pulling out her portable com but she stops herself. There is something that's been sitting heavy in her chest since he started talking, and it's stupid and most likely going to end badly, but she listens to it and skips contacting the local bounty office.

He's a sick man, and while the knowledge he possessed could be considered a threat Emma finds herself sure that's the only threat he poses to her at the moment.

"This is a one-time thing," she reminds herself. "Next time, I'm hauling him in."

+

Emma makes a mental note as she disembarks from the port to thank Granny for her boots and the mix of mania and ingenuity that undoubtedly inspired them.

The trip back to the  _ Den _ is uncomfortably silent without Ruby calling to press her for details. 

+

She's less than a day back away from the  _ Den _ when the silence gets too be much.

"I'm not mad at her," Emma tells Billy as soon as their wave connects. She knows how she sounds but can't bring herself to care. 

"Oh?" Billy frowns, leaning back in his chair. He's not happy with her, but he's also not  _ unhappy _ which is more than she expected.

"Yeah," she looks him in the eye, making sure he understands. "Maybe you could let her know that?"

+

It isn't magically fixed after that - Ruby still watches Emma with wounded eyes from time to time and Emma would be lying if she didn't resent her and Granny's leash holding her back from Peter. 

Still, Ruby makes them hot cocoa every night Emma's docked in the  _ Den _ . She shares the latest gossip and news with a passionate energy that warms something inside Emma.

"You're a good person," Emma says cutting her off mid-sentence. "You know that, right?"

Ruby's smile dims, but she manages to stretch it back out. "You're not nearly as shity as you seem to think you are, either."

+

Emma's on Lilac turning in a bounty when her world takes an unpleasant spin.

" _ You're _ taking him?" 

Both men smile at her with an eerie symmetry that has Emma trying her best to shake off the urge to stand between them and her bounty. These are Alliance officers, sure, she's rarely seen them dressed to the nines like this but-

"Your name?" The second man smiles at her and Emma can't help but shudder and think of the icy winds on Beylix.

"Elizabeth," Emma says as she presents the proper IdentiCard and matching chit. "Elizabeth Mallard." She smiles for good measure because Elizabeth has nothing to hide, she just wants to get paid.

The hand that takes her IdentiCard and chit is what cements her plans to get away - far away - as soon as possible. Both men's hands are startlingly blue - gloves, she realizes somewhat manically.

Emma can't help but think of a mad man looking for his (maybe) daughter, and  _ oh, no. _

The second blue-handed man gives her a respectful nod, "It will be just a moment, Ms Mallard and you shall have your reward."

"I'm in no rush," she says, hoping it sounds believable.

+

Emma cold starts her engines and climbs to their top speed the moment she gets permission to disembark. She spends three hours twisting her necklaces between her fingers, rubbing the pads of her fingers raw before she opens up her coms to the lowest frequencies. There's nothing but static there, but true coms static is rarely so placid.

"I'm looking for a mad man," she says slowly, unsure of every word and even more unsure of why she's doing this. "Tell him… Tell him Emma wants to see him. Tell him she's seen the men."

The 'verse is silent around her, but Emma has been living in the silence long enough to know that the whisper network is as effective as it is real.

+

Against her better judgment, she docks and rents a room for a week at the port closest to her transmission point.

She coms the  _ Den _ most days, spending the rest of her downtime digging through piles of the current bounties looking for possible jobs and sending the promising candidates to Granny for her opinion. The tables in the port's restaurant are large enough to spread out her tablet and files and as long as she leaves healthy enough tips the servers don't care how long she stays there, alternating between watching the ships dock and looking up various leads on the pile of bounties she deems doable.

Even with the constant levels of low-grade anxiety, it's the closest thing to a vacation she's had in a long time.

+

He's wearing a hat this time, large and stupidly attention-grabbing for a man with a price on his head. The scarf from last time has been left elsewhere, and when he catches her lingering over his scar he raises his brow challengingly before sliding into the vacant seat at her table. This is his version of war paint, she'd wager.

"Cocoa?" Emma offers, raising her own cup towards him. He says nothing, seemingly content to sit and stare blankly at her. The area above his left eye is still rimed with faint hints of the sickly green of an old bruise.

"You were right, you know," she tells him, "about their gloves."

His expression shifts quickly from boredom to exasperation, "I'm aware of that."

"No you weren't," she says as kindly as possible. Emma hums into her cup, swirling the contents absently. "I was thinking," she knows without looking up that his attention is completely hers, "that maybe if you give me the answers I want that I could help you try to get what you want."

"And what do I want?" He leans forward in his chair, looking both eager and resigned to be disappointed in her.

"Your daughter," Emma says as she sets her cup down carefully. "Or, the knowledge that she never existed. But if you lie to me, if you try  _ anything _ …" she meets his eyes, forcing him to see how serious she is, "well, you'd better pull whatever it is off flawlessly, because if I get even the smallest chance I'll make your daughter - imaginary or otherwise - an orphan." 

Jefferson stiffens, the corners of his lip curling angrily but he says nothing.

Emma sighs, "I may be off the mark on this, but I also think you might want someone to believe you."

"You don't believe me. Not really."

"Not all of it, no," she admits. "But I didn't like the look of the men I saw and I wouldn't mind learning a little more about them - if only to avoid them."

He watches her, grabbing a cup off the table and tossing it absently up and down in one hand.

"I'm curious," he drawls, "you had plenty of motive to turn me into the authorities - yet you left me there. Why?" 

"If it's bothering you that much I could remedy the situation."

"If it's all the same to you - I'll pass," his condescension of her practically tangible. Jefferson stops tossing his coffee cup after that and sets it down. Calmly he reaches out and begins pouring himself a cup, toasting it up towards her like this is something they do. 

"So, how did you know my name?" She asks, unwilling to let any more time pass without answers.

"You won't believe me," he says, his smile a little too bright, "hell, I don't always believe me."

Emma narrows her eyes at the ring of truth in his words. For all the truths he tells, nothing he says ever seems to make sense. "Try me."

Jefferson fusses with his cup, carefully avoiding her eyes. "I knew who you were the same way I know you were coming after me - you and everyone else I met told me."

She doesn't bother to point out all the flaws in that statement, she's too busy trying to figure out why it sounds like truth.

"Did you hack my ship?"

He shakes his head. 

"Are you stalking me?"

Placing one finger to his lips in feigned contemplation, Jefferson makes a thoughtful noise before shaking his head again. "Nope. Sorry."

"Are you-"

"No," he cuts her off. "I just  _ know _ those things the same way that I know about the family on Ariel and their precious baby boy."

Emma finds her hand hovering over her holster without a reason she can put a name too. 

"Can't or won't," Jefferson wonders aloud, watching her with what looks an awful lot like pity.

" _ What _ ?"

"Oh, sorry," he says, anything but. "Sometimes it's hard to discern between what is spoken and what is merely thought."

"Who are you?" She means it to come out hard, the voice she saves for bluffs and promises that end in blood but what comes out is scared and tiny and nothing that Emma wants to be. 

"I'm just a sad little man who's lost his mind, remember?" 

One of his hands reaches out, two fingers sliding under her right hand and applying pressure until it lifts from over her holster and moves above the table. She allows it, resting her hands on the table and pretending they aren't about to start shaking. 

"There," he proclaims, "if we keep this up we might actually manage to have a conversation that doesn't end in you menacing me."

"We're not done with that conversation," she tells him after a moment of silence. "I will get my answers."

"Then our interests are aligned."

Unsure of what to do with that Emma tries moves the conversation onto something  _ slightly _ less mad, "Who are these gloved guys?"

"Soldiers," Jefferson gets a distant look in his eye that makes Emma want to return her hand to her holster. "They claim to work for the Alliance, but that's a lie too deep even for you to untangle."

Emma wants to laugh, maybe scream, but even more than that she wants to know how deep this rabbit hole goes. "And the truth?"

"Complicated."

"Of course it is," Emma rubs at her temples, wishing for patience as she tries to look for the truth buried in the madness. Against her better judgment she asks: "And who exactly do you think I fit into all of this? Why would you even be looking for me?"

He frowns, staring down at the dredges of his drink like they might offer up some great truth. "Because you are who you are - mostly," he corrects himself with an angry smirk. "You're not the first person I've looked for - I spent a long time looking for someone who might believe me. I spent a lot of time trying and failing with the saintly heroic types - then I bought a table."

Emma waits, but when it's clear no more is coming she asks: "And?"

Jefferson looks confused, "And what?"

"Oh, I don't know - maybe how a  _ table _ matters in all this?"

"Because of people," he says it like it's obvious like she's the one being crazy and unfathomable. "People think the strangest things when they don't think you can hear them." 

"And somehow all this meant something that leads you to that I - as incomplete as I am-" she tries to sound insulted but it comes out resigned, "could help you?"

Jefferson's levels of annoyance with her reach a new height and she's rewarded with a spectacular eye roll. "That's what people like you  _ do _ ."

"People like me?"

"You're not ready for that," he says waving that topic away. 

Emma wants to run, to disappear, maybe just to throw her cup at his head. Instead, she sits there and wonders what could happen that could possibly make a man like the one in front of her. More importantly, she wants to know what could make him think she could ever do anything right.

"You think that you can read minds and you think I can help you," she sums up for her own benefit.

"And you think you can tell when people lie, so really, are you someone who can judge?"

"Yes."

"Then am I lying to you?"

"No," Emma allows. "But I'm starting to think that's only because you're sick enough that you can't tell the truth from the stories your mind creates." 

"It's almost impressive how you can manage to ignore what's right in front of you," there's pity in his voice, but more than that there's sorrow. "Is it really so terrible to have faith in things that make no sense?"

"Maybe," She's had faith in things, but it's never ended well. "What I  _ do _ know that I let people down. And, no offense, but you're not exactly working with a full deck and I'm not sure how you'll handle it when you figure I'm not whatever you've built me up to be in your mind."

"Trust me when I say that I've managed to survive worse things." Jefferson sets his cup down, the shadows under his eyes are deep and dark. "There's a saying - what doesn't kill you-"

"I know," Emma cuts him off- memories of cold nights huddled near the Bug's engine for warmth, the weight of the necklaces that hang from her neck in penance, and all the things she'd hoped to live to see back before she learned the futility of such things.

Emma's survived, she knows there's often little strength and even less victory in it. Survivors aren't to be romanticized, she thinks, they're to be pitied.

Jefferson watches her, spinning his cup lazily in circles by its handle. "Do you know, though?" He muses. "Or do you just think you know?"

"Questioning my mental state isn't really helping your argument."

"I'm not questioning your mental state  _ or _ arguing," he points out. "I'm saying that if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you."

+

Emma leaves with a new com point in her ship's database and more than a few notions that Jefferson is as mad as he is on to something very real. 

The idea that a branch of the Alliance exists in secret and is up to no good isn't exactly hard to believe. It's not even the first time it's been theorized. Emma's heard her share of stories from Browncoats over the years, mutterings and cries from the sad souls who'd had too much to drink too many friends buried on distant moons.

She coms Granny, unable to wait. 

"Have you ever heard about a group of enforcers for the Alliance that aren't really on the up-and-up? They might wear blue gloves…."

"Blue gloves?" Granny muses to herself, eventually shaking her head. "No, I'm afraid I haven't."

The lie is well done, maybe even one of the best Emma's ever heard. She's been lied too many times, but this one - this one hurts.

Emma allows Granny to steer the conversation to another topic that Emma only half listens too, nodding along as nothing has changed between them.

+

"I'm sorry, but you call her  _ Granny _ ?"

"Yes," Emma says tightly, hoping Jefferson gets the message that she really isn't in the mood for this. " _ Everyone _ calls her Granny."

Jefferson looks dangerously close to laughter, "Of course they would."

"Hey," she snaps, "concentrate! She was in the war - a Browncoat - I figured she might know something."

He hums, still looking deeply amused by everything. "So she lied to you when you asked her?"

"Yeah," Emma says still aware of the painful sting of that. 

"Tell me, does this Granny by chance know your name - your real name?"

Emma isn't sure where this is going, even more so she doesn't care. "She's the one who got me my current IdentiCard."

"Typical," he mutters under his breath. "You'd think that at some point she would have learned to stop lying. It never protects anyone, not in the ways that really matter."

The low-grade headache that had been haunting Emma all day suddenly kicks it up a notch. She rubs at her temples in vain, torn between crying and laughing because the most honest person currently in Emma's life is not only touched by the 'verse but has been left crushed under its weight. 

"This… this is all  _ wrong _ ."

"And this is news? You can hear lies," Jefferson points out with a disappointed frown. "You already know that truths are stranger than fiction." 

"Then point me towards the nonfiction," Emma says, scared of how much she means it. 

Jefferson watches her for a moment then sighs as if he’s made a decision, "Where are you now?"

Emma narrows her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. "Why?"

"Because I'm planning to come and do great harm to you, obviously." He raises an eyebrow in challenge, "Tell me - truth or lie?"

"Lie," Emma admits, already sending him her coordinates. 

+

They dock, and after curling up his nose at her offer to come aboard her obviously inferior ship she feels it only fair to do the same when he lifts a silver teapot to her in question.

"Pass," she doesn't bother to be polite about it. 

Jefferson gives her a look, one that conveys exactly how much he thinks she's acting like a poorly behaved child as he pours a cup for himself. He drains his cup in a single pull and moves to refill it straight away.

He looks more ragged than usual, she realizes as she watches his down his third cup. There's more than a hint of scruff on his face and his clothing is all wrinkled and mused.

"Long day?"

"Aren't they all." He finally stops drinking when the teapot can give no more, scowling down at it like it was a personal attack on him, "I ran into some issues on the rim and when I finally figured it would be safe to rest you were kind enough to wave and bother me with your own issues."

Emma finds herself smiling, growing even more amused when it irks him even more than he already was. 

"You're insufferable," he mutters.

"And you seem to have a slight addiction to tea." She smiles, but it falters as she takes the full picture of him in. 

"The hat," She ticks off. "The tea and all  _ this _ ," she says waving in his general area.

Jefferson turns as he fixes another pot of tea, his back to her, "Are you going somewhere with this?"

"Are you familiar with any old children's stories from Earth-that-was?"

"Some," he admits.

"Have you heard of the Mad Hatter?"

"I have," he turns back around, "but I'd be curious to hear your version of it."

"Well," Emma says, "once upon a time-"

+

Jefferson's ship contains more hard copy maps of the 'verse than Emma had thought even existed. 

"A hobby," he explains, watching her handle a map with obvious disdain. "Please do try to at least pretend to be gentle with them."

Emma frowns down at the paper map, considering it. "You know, you could save on shelf room if you folded these instead of rolling them," she takes two sides and makes a show of starting to bring the edges together and isn't at all surprised when Jefferson turns several shades of red before snatching the map out of her hands.

"Honestly," he complains. "I tried, but I'm starting to think your help isn't worth all this."

It's another lie, one that makes Emma speak without thinking. 

"You really are lonely, aren't you?"

+

Emma does her best to act like nothing's changed when she returns to the Den. 

"Penny for your thoughts," Ruby offers.

"A meal of your choice for a rain check," Emma counters.

Ruby scowls, but caves rather predictably. 

+

The itch sets in before Emma's even been in port for forty-eight hours. That's not uncommon on other ports, but normally she can spend at least a week in the Den before it starts to feel like a cage or the siren songs of the 'verse brings her back into her ship.

Laying on her cot that night she reads a book she'd liberated from Jefferson's library about sailors who'd been dashed into the rocks for the love of the song.

There are worse ways to go, she thinks.

+

Granny's wave to her is completely normal except for how everything is wrong and Emma's sure she's not the only one aware of it. Neither of them talk about why they're tiptoeing around the other, no one says  _ I don't know if I trust you to tell me the truth _ \- but the message is there all the same. 

"I barely had a chance to see you last time you docked," Granny tells her. "I have a new pistol I thought you'd want to try out."

"Sorry," Emma offers, not meaning it at all. "You know how work can be." 

+

It's a mistake and Emma knows it going in. 

She's self-aware enough to know that she's a disaster on her own and that there's a good chance that anything she touches will only be tarnished in her wake. More importantly, Emma knows she's not yet at the point where the idea of pulling someone down with her just to sate an urge is something she's capable of. Someone damaged already, though… 

Emma's never claimed to be a saint.

Jefferson, for all the things she suspects that he could be capable of is unlikely to notice or care about the weight of her flaws. Any tarnish he gained in her presence would be purely negligible. 

It helps, too, that he's familiar. 

Jefferson cocks his head, looking at her like he's just noticed how closely she's been standing next to him, how she's watching him. She's worried for a moment that she'll have spoken, to explain why and give voice to her most pathetic plans, but then he's frowning at her. For a moment she startled enough by his sudden and forceful attention that she almost believes that he  _ can _ hear the things he claims.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't flattered, but are you sure this is a good idea?"

Emma bites the inside of her cheek, one shoulder shrugging. "I don't really  _ do _ good ideas," she reminds him. 

Jefferson considers her and Emma takes a pointed step closer to him, testing the waters.

"I know you think that I'm mad," he steps back, away from her. "But I'm not so mad as to want to be some kind of villain in your little scenario."

"I'm not asking for a villain," she assures him, and she takes another step forward pointedly. "I'm looking for some time with someone who won't make me feel like I'm one."

Jefferson stops moving away and instead leans closer, observing her up close like she's a puzzle. He's looking for something, and Emma begrudgingly lets some of her walls down in the hopes it speeds up his search.

"You, Emma Swan, are not the villain of the story," he whispers conspiratorially. "Trust me on this."

"I'm not the hero you seem to think I am, either."

"Heroes rarely are the people we think they are," he speaks slowly as though he wants her to  _ hear _ his words. "More often than we'd like to admit they're simply flawed people who've suffered until they were angry and hurt enough that they didn't mind going chasing after a few dragons."

Emma shakes her head, unable to keep the smile from her face. "Were you always like this?"

"As much as you've always been as you are now," He frowns, watching her. "But… if this was a story, what role do you think I'd fill?"

Emma doesn't remember ever having to leap through hoops like Jefferson's before sex, but she also finds herself considering his question, "Depends on how far you've gone, I suppose."

"Do you want to know how far I've gone?" It's an honest question, and there's more than a hint of desperation in his voice. 

She thinks of his bursts of anger - as quick to burn away as they are to ignite. "Have you ever killed anyone who didn't need to be put down?"

"No," he blinks, slow and oddly dangerous in its action, "but I have left people alive." 

He's trying to scare her. "Those people," she pushes, "were connected to your daughter's disappearance?"

"Yes," he hisses, unrepentant. His lips press together, an angry gash to match the one he wears like a cautionary tale around his neck. 

Absently, Emma thinks they should start a club. Some people wear their hearts on their sleeves, they wear their failures around their necks. She wonders if he'd answer her if she asked him about the scar. She wonders if she'd talk about her own decorative failures.

"Emma-"

"This isn't a story," she reminds him, unsure if he's ever  _ really _ aware of it, "and you're not a hero - but I wouldn't call you a villain either."

This time when Emma steps forward he doesn't move away. Instead, he reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear with a deft hand. 

"It's never too late to turn back," he says with a forced casualness that doesn't become him. 

"We've survived everything else so far," Emma finds herself watching his lips. "I'm pretty sure that as long as you don't pull anything funny we'll both end up surviving the night."

He inclines his head and she rises to meet him, and the kiss is beautiful in its own way - if not earth-shattering or life-affirming. 

Jefferson pulls back enough to whisper against her lips, "If the hero says it, it must be so."

+

He fucks like he speaks. 

His focus on her is both terrifying and capricious. She knows he enjoys winding her up - making her so dizzy that she can hardly think before changing his tune until she digs her nails into him as punishment.

"Fucking.  _ Maniac _ ." She accuses him between breaths. 

He laughs, loud and genuine in a way that makes him languid and makes her stomach clench. Emma takes advantage of both, pressing her thighs together around him and twisting until the momentum rolls them both other. With a vindictive glee she holds him where she wants him and takes what she wants from him. He closes his eyes, his hands frantically trying to get a grip on her hips as if he might be able to hold her still. 

"You planning on just laying there all day?" She taunts, breath coming out in hard gasps.

He scowls, and she moves in for the kill - relishing in the noise he makes and how his hands clench against her.

+

She catches her breath laying against his chest. In the bright artificial light his scar is almost impossible to ignore. Emma's never seen a proper garrote wire, but on Ita she'd once wrapped the copper wire Granny had sewn into her sweater hemline around a woman's neck in a desperate bid to survive. The cuts that had been carved into Emma's hands and the woman's skin hadn't exactly looked like Jefferson's but they were  _ close _ .

"This is interesting," she tells him.

One of his hands moves to trace up her clavicle, lingering over the spot on her throat where all three chains meet. "These as well."

Emma drops it.

+

They share the bed that night, he stays on one side and her on the other. Emma wakes first, gathering her things and leaving as he starts to stretch himself awake.

"Thank you," she offers.

Jefferson looks up long enough to let his eyebrows do something complicated and then he's rolling to his side, apparently ready to return to sleep. 

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

"You look happy," Ruby observes with overly excited eyes.

Emma waves her off, "Caught a decent-sized bounty."

Ruby's smile turns into full-blown smirk and for a moment Emma's sure she's been caught-

"Good," Ruby says, flipping open her menu excitedly. "'Cause I kinda blew all my money on some new boots and Granny refuses to give me an advance on my paycheck but I really feel like ordering everything on the menu that includes the word chocolate."

"Go nuts," Emma allows, already feeling sympathy pains for her bank balance. "What are friends for?"

Ruby pauses, her eyes darting up nervously towards Emma before moving back on her menu with a laser-like focus. A tiny smile is peeking out from what Emma knows is Ruby's best attempts at a blank face. 

"Friends?" Ruby asks quietly.

"Yeah," she agrees, feeling oddly nervous. She systematically shreds a napkin, unwilling to look up, "is that so surprising?"

"Not to me, just… I wasn't sure you knew." Ruby shrugs apologetically, "Granny says your emotional awareness of others is usually about a three."

Emma isn't sure she wants to know, but… "Out of what? Five? Ten?"

Ruby winces, "One hundred?"

Emma sits back in her chair, grabbing her glass and feeling generally unsure of how exactly to go about objecting to that.

"It's kinda endearing?" Ruby offers, "You're like one of the marketplace cats - kinda standoffish and mysterious - so when they actually start to like you it's all the sweeter, you know?" She stops, considering Emma in a way that makes her want to squirm, "You're also best lured in with food."

An awkward silence falls over their table.

"Lured in?"

Ruby nods solemnly, "I've spent the last six years of my life perfecting my Emma Swan Domestication Methods." She looks extraordinarily pleased with herself, "I'm basically the leading expert in the field, even Granny says I should publish a paper on my findings."

Emma knows she'll regret asking, but she has to. "Findings?"

"You know-"

No. Emma really, really doesn't.

"- stuff like how you get twitchy and turn into a scary drunk when you've been in port too long."

"I do not!"

"Oh, you so do," Ruby says with a knowing nod. "And how you'll sit through just about anything if someone puts real fruit in front of you - well, at least until the fruit is gone."

Emma gets a vivid flashback of random Den residents approaching her with foodstuffs that now in retrospect seemed to coincide with them asking her for favors or news from other parts of the 'verse.

"You…"

"Yeah," Ruby nods unrepentantly, "for the right price I'm what's known as an Emma-whisperer. Well, an Elizabeth-whisperer," she amends tapping the side of her nose cheekily.

"We're not friends," Emma decides.

"Too late, no take-backs."

+

Jefferson is easy enough to find and easy in other ways Emma can also appreciate. When she takes the stool next to him in the bar she'd tracked him too he simply toasts her presence. Four drinks later when she stands to leave, he stands to follow. 

Easy.

The men standing between them and the door - mudders by the look and smell of them - aren't, but again, Jefferson follows her without being asked. He doesn't do something as silly as trying to protect her or fight for her, he simply stands back and deals with the dazed bodies she sends his way.

Outside in the muggy air and oppressive heat she leans against the outer wall of the bar and tries to catch her breath and runaway pulse. Jefferson pants, a wild grin on his face and glee in his eyes. His scarf is long gone, lost in the fray and exposing him for who he is.

He frowns, tilting his head as he studies her face, "People have no idea what kind of anger lives inside you, do they?"

"So I've got some anger management issues," Emma shrugs dismissively. "Me and half the 'verse."

He laughs at that, too loud to be truly happy and is willing to let her drag him back to his ship.

+

Her next three bounties are all small fish, but it takes her less than a week to grab them all so in the end it evens out. She buys a bottle of mid-range whiskey and waves Jefferson to celebrate.

"What," Jefferson snaps as soon as the com connects.

"Where are you?"

"I could have been busy, you know," Jefferson says as he levels narrowed eyes at her, but Emma sees his hand moving off the screen and sure enough her systems pings to alert her to the new transmission from _Cheshire_ listing a location.

+

Jefferson is a surprisingly good listener- as long as you're willing to listen to his often _brutally_ honest assessments afterward.

"I think I'm being steamrolled by a nineteen-year-old who has publicly declared herself the leading expert in the field of me."

Jefferson hums absently, still nosing lazily at her collarbone, "Kill her?"

"Not really the type of approach I'm looking for," she says with more patience than she thinks she should have to use. "She's my friend. She probably saved my l-" Emma stops speaking so quickly that her teeth ache from the violent _clack_ that results. 

The lazy affection being peppered along her skin stops, and Jefferson pushes himself up on his elbows to watch her. He's good at this part too - it's half mind games where he tries to make her think he can read her mind and half hoping to wait her out while making it clear she doesn't have to feel guilty if she decides to pretend nothing was said. As long as she doesn't straight out lie to get out of it, his patience with her in these moments is uncharacteristically endless. 

_Birds fly, fish swim, bandersnatches confound, and Emma Swan runs when she can't fight_, he'd said not unkindly the first time it had come up. 

Emma's still not sure what a bandersnatch is.

"Ruby looked out for me when I wasn't thinking straight enough to look out for myself," she admits. 

Jefferson nods like that makes sense to him, scratching idly at his neck, "What does she expect in return?"

Emma thinks about that, squinting up at the ceiling.

"I don't think she wants anything from me - not anything of value, at least," she decides. "Nothing I wouldn't already give her of my own free will."

On top of her Jefferson makes a pleased noise. They lay there, both lost in their own heads while their bodies lay lazily entangled.

"I had a wife," he says breaking the silence. "I think."

Emma sees a shadow of the man she'd first met in his eyes when she looks up at him. Not for the first time she finds herself wondering if maybe parts of that man hadn't truly been window dressing designed to lure her in like one of Ruby's experiments. 

Her fingers have wandered to grasp at Neal's necklace at some point, the familiar lines of a swan pressing into her thumb. "What was that like?"

"It was hard to think straight." He shrugs, "Losing her was a lot like having your head cut off and having to come to terms with the knowledge that's it's no longer being held up by your body."

Emma starts to say _no, I meant-_ but she stops herself, moving to pull his head down to rest once more against her chest. 

+

He tells her fairy tales sometimes - Emma knows it's less whimsy and more space sickness, but it's benign enough that she allows herself to be sucked in. She listens to him twisting and weaving Earth-that-Was stories and mythology into something awful and so unlike the stories Emma thought she knew. In between the tragedies he tells her about fantastical things that she thinks she wouldn't mind believing in. He tells her about an enchanted forest, how some parents loved their daughter so much that they'd smashed through the boundaries of their reality to keep her safe, and most importantly how there are worlds where happy endings can be real.

Sometimes though the weight of Jefferson's sickness creeps in stronger than normal and he seems forgets that the stories are just that - _stories_.

"If any of that was true don't you think the 'verse would be a better place?" Emma says as gently as possible. "A happier place?"

"It's the curse," Jefferson insists with a trace of venom in his voice. "Look around you, we're living in a cursed land."

Emma is too tired to have this conversation again. "So are the good guys going to coming to save the day, at least?"

Jefferson slumps in his chair, "No."

"I thought that's how stories were supposed to end?" 

"They were," he says hollowly, "but something went wrong. He- There was a boy, a long, _long_ time ago. He and his mother were supposed to save us all, to bring back the magic…"

"But?"

Jefferson smiles but his eyes remain dead, "But little boys and poisoned apples don't mix."

"Wait… I thought Snow White ate the apple," Emma says with narrowed eyes. It's not like Jefferson to mix up his own mythology.

"She wasn't the only one," he chuckles angrily, "back then we _all_ made mistakes in the name of love."

Emma pointedly ignores the _we_, focusing on: "Mistakes?"

"Sins, blunders," He waves his hand absently. "Whatever you want to call them." Jefferson stops talking, and watches Emma closely.

"I never got the chance to apologize to you back then," he cocks his head and watches her with keen eyes. "I hated you so much back then - you had everything and I had nothing. Apologizing now feels pointless though - I know I'd do it all again if I thought it meant getting Grace back." Jefferson gives her a self-deprecating smile, "As you're aware, I have trouble keeping my head where she is involved."

Emma wonders not for the first time if she should be afraid of the man in front of her. "You think I'm there? In your stories?"

"I know you don't believe me," his anger over her disbelief is there - but just barely. It's more resignation than anything.

"I'm sorry," Emma says, meaning every word of it. She's seen space sickness take many forms, but watching first hand as someone capable of calm and lucid conversations slips in and out of a fantasy world is hard to see. 

Still, she listens to his stories - all of them - turning them over and over again in her head as she searches for the places where truth and madness meet and tries to find _his_ story.

Once upon a time - because that's how he'd tell it - Emma knows that there was a man who had or did not have a daughter. Either way, he loved his daughter very much.

+

The best thing for Jefferson's bad days is to let them run their course, he'd assured her. For _really_ bad days he'd taken the precaution of showing her all the hidden drawers and nooks that are scattered across his ship. He'd walked her through how to use the various hypos and syringes hidden and because Jefferson a strange person even on his most lucid days he had finished his tour by injecting himself to demonstrate to her exactly how quickly it knocked him out.

When the angry ranting that had been filling his ship for the last hour starts to include the sounds of breaking items Emma makes up her mind. Behind her, the noise stops but Emma pretends not to notice.

"Is that for me?" Jefferson asks as Emma opens up the tiny box strapped under his piano and retrieves the syringe and turning to show him. He frowns, watching her approach, "Today is not a good day, is it?" 

"It's not a good day," Emma agrees. She raises a challenging eyebrow, "You know what I need to do, right?"

He ignores her and scowls down at the smashed dishes that surround him, cursing them under his breath for betraying him.

"Jefferson," she says snapping her fingers to get his attention. "Are we gonna have a problem?"

"No," he stays where he is, bending his neck to the side and tugging down his collar. Emma jabs the needle home before he can reconsider. This time she's ready and catches him before he hits the floor.

"What the hell do you do when it's just you here?" She murmurs as she lowers him gently to the floor.

Jefferson continues blinking lazily at the ceiling. "Once-daily automated mental health screenings," he slurs. "Failure to comply and failing marks triggers the gas. Don't worry. You'll be able to get a decent enough score to pass."

Emma doesn't know what part of that to focus on, but suddenly his insistence that he _needed_ to use the computer for an hour every morning and every evening makes more sense. 

"When you wake up we're gonna talk about that gas and how I should have been told about all that long _before_ now." 

"Stop," he stumbles over the word as his eyes start losing focus, "nagging me."

"For now," Emma agrees. She reaches out hesitantly, smoothing his hair back as his blinks get longer and longer until his eyes are closed. 

+

Jefferson wakes inelegantly with a grunt and a flail.

"Damn," he mutters, rubbing at his neck. "Did I-"

"Break all your dishes and cups because they held no food or drink - only _lies_?" Emma flips a page in her book absently scanning it. "Yes, yes you did."

Jefferson hums, "That's the second time, now. I'm thinking of investing in some plates with some type of festive food-themed art on them."

+

"So, you never got around to telling me the other day," Emma asks as she picks away at her ration bar, "what stopped everyone from getting their happy endings in your story?"

"True love," Jefferson's face closes itself off. "It's a bitch, that. When a love like that is stolen from you it's easy to lose yourself."

"That's not an answer- I'm asking what _happened_."

"A parents grief," Jefferson says, his eyes are red and still a little too bright for Emma's tastes.

"_And…_" 

"Well, that and a sword plunged into the chest of a wicked queen. It was all very moving and dramatic," he assures her. "If a little prince hadn't lain dead in the same room as all of them I imagine people might have felt the urge to cheer."

He wanders over, breaking a corner off her ration bar and chewing on it thoughtfully. "Today's not a good day, either, is it?"

Emma tries to remember what people say about white lies but decides she doesn't really care. "Yeah," she agrees. "You're not quite right today. Is this normal or should I be worried?"

"You're flesh and blood protected from the vacuum of space by only a thin layer of metal," Jefferson points out solemnly. "You'd have to be mad not to be a little worried."

"_Jefferson_," Emma warns.

He ignores her, plowing on with a frantic hand gesture. "And have you ever considered all the fantastical ways that I could become a danger to myself and others?" He points to her, "You're _other_, by the way."

"I've considered." She raises one foot in the air, pointing her toes into the toe of her boot and letting a tiny arc of electricity dance over her sole.

"A single contingency plan for dealing with a crazed man on a spaceship?" Jefferson shakes his head, clearly unimpressed.

"I have six contingency plans, actually," Emma corrects. "You only get to know about that one." 

"Your dedication is a terrifying thing," he pauses and reconsiders. "No, _you're_ a the terrifying thing."

"Yeah, well," she stops the flow of electricity before he tries to lick it or something equally strange. "I'm a complicated girl."

Jefferson laughs, too big and too joyously to be anything close to sane and wags a finger at her. "Nice try, but you haven't been a girl for a very long time, _Other_."

+

Emma gets ready to dose him right before lunch. Jefferson has objections this time, so Emma demonstrates contingency plan number three.

She doesn't catch him when he falls this time.

+

The hissing sounds from the bedroom alert Emma to Jefferson's return to the world.

"Headache?" Emma leans against the door frame, smiling sweetly.

He snarls halfheartedly at her but keeps his eyes clenched shut.

"So," she takes a deep drink from her glass, "how about we talk about the knockout gas that's wired into your life support systems."

Jefferson groans, rubbing at his face. "You're a perpetually unpleasant woman, aren't you?"

"Hey, I'm not the one who left bite marks yesterday, buddy."

+

Jefferson doesn't apologize. What he does do it hover and send death glares at every inanimate object in his path.

"It's fine," Emma reassures him, _again_. "We're fine."

His eyes dart over to her arm and the red teeth prints there, proceeding to increase the level of his sulk.

"Next time," he tells her, "you should leave. Like a _sane_ person." 

"And miss out on you telling all your scarves how special and pretty they are?" Emma snorts, "Not likely."

+

It's not really all that surprising but it does make Emma stop and consider her world views when she goes to check for missed coms on Jefferson's computer and discovers that there are only seven contacts saved there. One is hers and the other six are connected to repair stations.

"It really is just you, all alone in this huge ship - isn't it?"

Jefferson still hasn't met her eyes since he woke from his second slumber but his left leg starts bouncing in an anxious rhythm that's as good as an answer.

"I'm sure you're aware of how economizing is often a vital part of survival."

"Economizing," Emma echoes.

"I don't need _people_," he continues tightly, "People would only slow me down from what's actually important - Grace."

She thinks about the large elaborately decorated rooms on his ships, the way the first and last things he does each day is test himself to see if he's sane enough to keep going. How he spends hours scouring the feeds for anything that might help him figure out if somewhere out there a little girl exists and needs his help or if she's just a byproduct of his illness. Emma wonders how many years he'll have left if Jefferson keeps burning as hot and as hard as he does. 

She opens her mouth to speak but stops when she notices what's right in front of her. On the table between them sits a bowl of grapes that probably cost more than Emma spent on fuel cells in the last month. She knows for a fact that if she opens his pantries there will ration bars in all her favorite flavors. 

"I think," she says slowly, "for me at least, that the scariest thing in this 'verse is admitting that while I _can_ go it alone - I don't want to. Sometimes, the only thing that keeps you up and moving when you need it are the same things we think are holding us back."

Jefferson scowls, his eyebrows explaining quite clearly how very little he thinks of her opinions.

"I've never told her - but I like how Ruby keeps sending waves to me even when she knows I'm busy with work. And despite everything I know that she's not telling me, I still want Granny to keep chewing me out when she thinks I'm wrong. I want you to keep trying to convince that Earth-that-Was fairy tales are wrong even though I know I should drop you off at the closest bug-house I find." She shrugs, "None of that makes sense, but it's not so bad."

Jefferson's eye twitches but he says nothing.


	7. Chapter 7

"Haven't seen you in a while," Ruby points out over lunch.

Emma shrugs, continuing to push noodles around on her plate. "It's a big 'verse and the bad guys aren't always considerate about where they set up shop."

Ruby smiles tightly, "Right. And I'm an idiot who can't notice that you're lying to me or that something is up between you and Granny." Her chopsticks clatter down to her plate and she stands but doesn't meet Emma's eyes.

"You're still hurting and I get that, just like I _get_ that you have trust issues," she says in a harsh whisper. "And I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and forgive you for lying to me, but at some point you're going to have decide to either talk to me about something - _anything_ \- or you need to stop talking to me until you figure out how not to be a jerk."

Ruby leaves, not bothering to look back and Emma is sorely tempted to follow in suit.

+

Finding Ruby is easier than normal, and Emma wonders if that was intentional as she leans against the doorway to her office.

"I didn't mean to hurt you."

Ruby arches a single eyebrow, not looking up from her screen. "Doesn't mean you don't."

"Yeah, I'm getting that." Emma kicks absently at the floor, wishing this could all be fixed with a well-placed punch or a quick draw. The thick patter of Ruby's keyboard dies away, only adding to the tension Emma feels like she's drowning in.

"I still miss Graham," Emma pauses, and tries to swallow down all the other things that she could add to that. She keeps it simple, hardest of all, she keeps it honest. 

"A while ago I let a high ticket bounty go free because… because I _did_. He probably belongs in a bug house and I think I'm his only friend which is probably the most fucked up thing about the whole thing." Emma runs an anxious hand through her hair before tucking both arms around her waist self-consciously. "And Granny… well, we're complicated, but I don't want _us_ to be."

It says something about her headspace, she thinks, that she doesn't realize Ruby has gotten up and moved until she's wrapping herself around Emma. 

"Nothing is ever easy with you, is it?" Ruby murmurs.

"I'm sorry," she closes her eyes, refusing to add another breakdown to this years tally. She sniffs, burrowing farther into Ruby and clinging.

Ruby pats fondly at the base of Emma's neck, "Wanna hear thirty reasons why Billy's a stupid clueless jerk and how I'm the best thing that will ever happen to him?"

Emma knows this dance, and while she's rustier than she though it's an easy enough one to pick back up. 

+

Marco greets her in the marketplace with raised arms and a joyous smile that only makes Emma feel more guilty for avoiding the _Den_.

"You've returned!" He clasps a hand to her back, pulling her into his shop. "It's been too long since I've heard tales of your adventures," Marco chastises gently.

"I could do with less adventure, to be honest."

Marco nods in understanding, but there's a gleam in his eye and a curl in his lip. "But I hope you'll still give an old man a good story or two, yes?"

"Well," Emma slides into her space at the counter and mock appraises him, "I _did_ run into a strange little town on Higgins' Moon…"

+

Granny is more difficult than the others, the hungry way her eyes latch onto Emma as soon as she sees her only makes it harder to remember why she's angry.

"Emma," Granny says with a trembling smile. "Are you just stopping by, or-"

"No," Emma decides on the fly. "I'm in-between jobs. Though I could stick around here until the next one."

Granny turns her head, but not quickly enough for Emma to miss the relieved look in her eyes.

"Have you eaten?" 

"Not yet," Emma lies. "Wanna grab something with me in the food court?"

They're not better yet, but Emma knows they're getting there.

+

When Emma leaves to follow a lead on Harvest she makes her way to the bay with Granny by her side and the weight of a new modified pistol resting on her hip.

"Troubling times, lately," Granny had told her when she presented it to her. "Besides, I don't need it and I can't legally sell it since I tinkered with it, might as well give it to someone who might use it."

"Speaking of tinkering," Emma's hand moves to rest over the butt as she takes in the familiar sight of _Bug_, "think I could maybe commission something?"

Granny raises her brow, "Like?"

She shrugs, "Something as gentle as possible but that will still drop a person."

"_Gentle?_"

"Yeah, the only thing I've come across is gas-dispersed but it comes with some nasty headaches."

"Bit of an odd request," Granny muses, watching Emma closely.

"I crash-landed into your port on the worst day of my life and for some reason you basically tried to adopt me," Emma points out. "Weird is relative at this point."

+

Emma spends a month trudging across Verbena trying to evade detection from the Alliance while her bounty tries to evade her in turn.

It ends in a draw and while Emma isn't quicker, she is more accurate.

"Hey," Emma breathes deeply, focusing all her strength on keeping the secondary com's button depressed. "You busy?"

"_Why are you calling me on your secondary_?" Jefferson's irritated voice fills her cockpit, the sound of it for some reason is such a relief that Emma can't help but drop her head to her chest as she smiles through the tears.

"Alliance nearby," she says dismissively. "The IdentiCard Granny gave me is good - but I've been under Alliance med scanners before so if they-"

"_Why would the Alliance try to_-" Jefferson stops, a frustrated sigh echoing over the coms. "_Where are you? Send me your location and-_"

"I don't need a rescue mission," she says before he can get the wrong idea. "I've got a fully stocked first aid kit and more than enough juice in the _Bug_ to get me to the _Den_."

A silence falls between them, broken only by Emma's heavy breathing.

"_Do… do you need money?_"

"No," she’s too tired to try hiding the sadness in her voice. "I just had a really long couple of weeks and I ruined the new shirt Ruby got me before I left so I just wanted to… I don't know… hear a friendly voice?"

"_Ah,_" he clears his throat, "_well, did you catch your bounty?_"

Emma glances behind her to where she'd dragged the very still body of one Greg Mendell, "In a matter of speaking."

+

Jefferson is waiting outside of the bounty station when Emma emerges from turning in Mendell's corpse. 

"Have you considered that this might not be the best place to loiter when you have a six-figure bounty on your head?"

"Such good advice from the _dead prisoner_," he says with a toothy smile. 

+

Jefferson's med bay is nice enough to rival the hospital on the _Den_. 

"Sixteen year-old-me would have tried to rob you blind," Emma finds herself admitting as he examines her bandage work with disdain.

"I'm curious," he snarks, ripping the whole mess of tape and bandages off without warning, "was this wound treated by the six-year-old you by any chance?"

Emma has a retort, but before she can speak Jefferson grabs an aerosol can and sprays it liberally over the charred skin Mendell's laser pistol left her with. She doesn't scream, but it's a near enough thing.

"You did that on purpose," she hisses.

"I _am_ a mad man," he reminds her with a cheery smile.

+

She drinks the tea he offers, curling up in one of the overstuffed chairs in his map room and watches as Jefferson closes his eyes and sways - fingers dancing in the air to the music only he can hear.

"I had a dream," he tells her, still swaying, "you heard the music in your blood."

"Oh?" She says, pretending to care.

"Oh _yes_," he hisses happily. "You burned like the sun."

He spins around abruptly, moving to kneel next to her chair and looking up at her with fever bright eyes. Jefferson takes her hand in his, smiling widely.

"We followed you through the enemy's gates," he tells her. "We gave you an army."

Emma plays along, putting her cup down and resting that hand over his, "Who's we?"

Jefferson frowns, squinting off to the left, "We are always who we are, I am me and you are you and he is always made of rage and a hollow chest when you find him."

"Jefferson," she says softly. "When's your next test?"

+

Jefferson sleeps like the dead and Emma dreams of spinning hats and poisoned tea labeled _drink me_.

_That isn't for you,_ Dream Jefferson says, stealing the cup away from her. _You aren't her and she isn't you._

"Who's she?" Emma wonders, watching as he places the cup on the floor where it takes root, growing into a large mushroom.

_She was a mother,_ he says like she's a slow-witted child. _She even had a mother of her own, you know._

+

"I have a lead," Jefferson informs her over breakfast - a ration bar for her and some complicated but ultimately unappetizing granola mix for him.

Emma perks up, "Need help?"

"Yes, but nothing that you could ever offer," he's already too lost in thought to bother with manners. "I'll be running blacked out, so you'll have to find someone else to bother when you get lonely.

She hums, making a show of noisily crumpling up the ration bar's wrapper before she tosses it to the floor. 

"Childish," he chastises, already leaning down to pick it up. 

Emma acts quickly, swinging her legs up and over his head and dropping them down on his back. She crosses both legs at the ankle, leaning back and admiring her makeshift footstool as she finishes the rest of her bar.

Her foot stool sighs heavily, "_Really_, Emma?"

+

Later, in retaliation, Emma finds herself pressed up against the extravagant floor to ceiling viewing windows on Jefferson's ship while he tries to rip a condom open with only one hand and his teeth. 

In front of her the endless span of the 'verse is spread out, empty and altogether deadly. Even with the state of the art shields and the heat of the ship there's a chill that never leaves the space around the windows. When it's just right and her mind is empty the heavy heat on her back and the bitter bite of cold where her breasts are pressed to the translucent polymer almost makes her feel like she's being held precariously between madness and clarity.

Behind her, Jefferson fucks into her like he's attempting to push them both through the not-so-fragile barrier between them and the nothingness. 

Emma wonders what it would be like to throw the laws of 'verse out and to exist in a place where the only heat left was the heat of his mouth on her neck, his hands and their shaking grip on her, and his sex as he slides into her.

"Stop thinking," he grouses. 

"Distract me and maybe I'd stop," she challenges.

+

"I'll wave you when I'm back," Jefferson offers as he sees her back to the docking port. "And try to remember what I showed you when you change those bandages."

"Wait - I have to _change_ them?" Emma feigns surprise.

Jefferson's face starts to do that thing where Emma can tell he's reminding himself that throwing what amounts to his only friend in the whole 'verse out the airlock is probably a bad idea.

"_Cute_," he gives her a terse smile. "Now get off my ship. I've got places to go, shady government officials to stalk."

+

Emma ends up back at the _Den_. She wonders when exactly she stopped fighting the knowledge that all roads lead back here (probably because the 'verse has such a sick sense of humor).

She borrows Billy's computer on a whim, flipping through bounty after bounty, unsure what she feels like doing. Smaller purses are out - Emma wants a challenge this time. 

She types in her preferential purse range, watching as thousands of names and faces dissolve into only a few hundred. The mug shots are a drastic change from the previous group, less confused and irate faces staring back at Emma and many more composite mock-ups and blurry photos. 

In the bottom left of her screen she sees a poorly rendered face mostly hidden under a large hat. She smiles, sending a copy of Jefferson's bounty to her own personal server to give him later. He'd get a kick out seeing it, she thinks.

Returning her attention to the quandary at hand she narrows the list down more by illuminating anyone who both runs with a crew and has a history of living planetside. It was one of her harder lessons to learn thanks to stubborn pride, but Emma knows better than to engage non-spacers - especially multiple ones - on their home turf.

Space, though, space is _her_ territory. 

Behind her, she hears Billy's office doors swishing open.

"Hey, Emma," Billy says dryly, "feel free to use my computer, Emma."

"I wouldn't want to intrude," she picks up her glass, offering it in his general direction. "Drink? It's pretty decent stuff."

Billy snatches it out of her hand, scowling. "Considering what I paid for it, it should be."

"Considering what you charged me for my last tune-up I'd say you owe me at least a bottle of my own." Emma turns to face him, leaning back in his chair. She smiles, Billy echoing it back at her with a shake of his head.

"Ruby know you're here?"

"Sent her a message," she shrugs. "I haven't heard back yet."

Billy kills the remains of Emma's drink, "Granny's been keeping her busy lately." He turns his attention to the screen, scanning the rows of people with a careful eye before letting out a low whistle. "If you bag one of these you'll be _set_."

Emma holds up one hand, crossing her fingers, "Considering my current bank account and how Ruby's birthday is coming up, I'm hoping so."

Billy perks up predictably, "You have any ideas on what you're getting her yet?"

"Not yet." 

Billy makes an amused sound, moving to perch on the edge of his desk and scrolling through the list of bounties.

"I've worked on her ship," he says pointing to a sketch of a stern-looking woman. "Don't bother chasing after Mulan - your little _Bug_ wouldn't be able to keep up with her engines and she's running one of the only non-Alliance ships currently equipped with depth charges. I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure the rumors about her having some kind of plasma ordinances are true, too."

Emma frowns and drags Mulan's file to the _not interested_ pile. "What's she got her hands in that requires that kind of firepower?"

"She's pretty much the only thing standing between her sector of the rim and the pirates out there," Billy says with more than a hint of respect in his voice. "The charges against her - with the exception of the stuff related to her illegal spacecraft armaments - are bullshit."

"Lots of that going around lately," she murmurs glancing absently towards Jefferson's file.

"You have no idea," Billy is motions towards five more files. "These guys here, their only crimes outside of a few jammers and EMP cannons is doing the Alliance's job for them."

Emma selects all five files, dropping all three next to Mulan's and makes a point to start consulting Billy more often.

Soon enough Billy helps her sort several hundred files down into three categories - _Not without an army behind you_, the mostly harmless Browncoats, and the doable. 

She knew Billy was an incredibly gifted mechanic but she's genuinely surprised to discover just how much he knows about some of the ships that belong to the bounties. When he throws out a _too fast, too well armed_, or just a stern _no_ \- she listens.

"And then, there's Hook," Billy says tapping on a blurry and heavily pixelated photo of a man who seemed to be winking at what could only be a very low-end security cam. 

"_Hook_?"

"Killian Jones? He's a pirate - but everyone calls him Hook on the account of the…" Billy holds up a hand, one finger curled into a hook, "you know."

Emma crinkles up her nose, "_Really_?"

Billy smirks back, shrugging, "This guy seems to favor the dramatic - enough to forgo normal prosthetics." 

Hook's bounty isn't the biggest Emma's seen, but it's up there. "Are there any better pictures?"

"Naw, the guy's been around a while but no one's gotten a good look at him."

"No need to see his face, he'll be best recognized by that damned hook."

Emma doesn't jump, but Billy almost launches off the desk at the sound of Granny's voice. 

"Well, that and his ship," Granny smiles, acting like she didn't just sneak upon them. "Find the _Jolly Roger_ and I guarantee you'll find him."

"The _Jolly Roger_?"

"Victoria-class Corvette, if I'm not mistaken."

"Isn't th-"

"Yes," Granny confirms, "one of the Alliance's pride and joys." Her voice is whip-tight and it's hard to not see the way her lips curl down. "Take care if you come up against that ship - they're _nasty_ things."

Emma nods, "Billy, any chance you've got your hands on the _Jolly Roger_ before?"

"No way, Hook keeps to a different class of ports than the _Den_. I can't tell you much beyond this guy must have a brass set to be running around in an Alliance ship. Well, that and the rumors all say the ship's been retrofitted at least a dozen times."

She pulls up the best image of Hook they have, throwing the schematics of a stock Corvette next to it on the screen. The ship is a monster on its own - easily fifty times the size of _Bug_ and much, much better equipped.

"It's doable," Granny says sounding almost reluctant. "They're armored out the ass, got top of the line weapons platforms, and they're _quick_ for their size - and their captain and crew know it. Makes them feel invincible," she looks steadily at Emma. "Cocky people will hang themselves if you give them enough rope."

+

"I know that look," Marco declares with a shake of his head. 

"You do not."

He smirks, "I know you better than you think. I know that twinkle in your eye - what manner of scoundrel are you hunting this time, Elizabeth?"

Emma resists smirking too widely at the use of her other name, "A pirate. I've been looking for him for a week - finally got a nibble on the rim."

He makes an appreciative sound, "I've had more than one shipment fall to pirates - if you catch him, see if he has my shipment of oak boards."

"Will do," she promises with a smirk. "And I promise to bring back lots of stories."

"Good, good," he smiles, but it's weighed down by the shadows in his eyes. "You will be careful, yes?"

"You know me."

Marco fixes her with an unimpressed look, "Which is why I ask this of you."

+

The trip out to the rim is … quiet.

With Jefferson off chasing ghosts the majority of Emma's human interaction comes from the biweekly coms from Ruby and Granny and the port authorities when she has to stop and dock.


	8. Chapter 8

Ruby's still weeks away from turning eighteen when she and Granny get into a fight that ends with Ruby running away. 

Naturally, Emma is on the other side of the 'verse.

When Emma accepts the com from the _Wolf's Den_ she expects to see an excited Ruby pestering her for hints about her gift as per normal, but instead, she gets a screenful of anxious Granny. By the end of her explanation Emma's clutching at her star with one hand so hard she's sure the skin has broken if not bruised.

"I know I might be overreacting, but…" Granny trails off, looking older than Emma remembers seeing her. "The last sign of her was an anonymous ticket purchased for a one-way trip to Santo."

"Oh?" Emma's blood runs cold. It's a beautiful world objectively, but it's also one of the worst places for a person to wander into unprepared. There's a reason aspiring thugs like to introduce themselves as residents of Santo.

Santo is also about as far away from The Den or any other friendly port as one can get.

"Yes," Granny tries to smile but fails. "You understand why I'm asking for your help instead of waiting it out."

"I'm heading there now."

She doesn't bother with goodbyes, instead she does a hard shut down the com system to free up any extra energy she can for her upcoming trip. With practiced hands she brings up the engine overview and mentally tallies her power and stores. 

She's been running as silent as possible for almost a week now - ever since she first spotted the _Jolly Roger_ \- only stopping when she has too. The ship and Emma are already showing signs of fatigue, both in sore need of finding a safe port to rest at a while. 

"Out of the question," Emma murmurs. The best of her worst-case scenarios for Ruby involves not being recognized as a citizen of the _Den_. The worst ones involve well-informed enemies of Granny's finding her. Leverage is everything in this 'verse, and a loved one of an influential owner of one of the largest and most profitable ports in the system would pique the interest of all the wrong kinds of people.

Even with a hard burn it'd take several weeks to get anywhere _close_ to the _Den_ and while Emma isn't against skipping a few meals for a good cause her ship can't say the same. To stop and restock would add at the very _least_ an extra four days to the trip. The _Bug_ can and has outmaneuvered and outpaced half the ship's in 'verse - but only in sprints. Her engines and fuel cells aren't built for much more a leisurely cruise or a brutally quick show of skill.

Her secondary screen still has Billy's hobbled together schematics for what he thinks Hook' retrofitted Corvette might have displayed next to the blurry face of her bounty. Emma reaches for her necklace, gently spinning Graham's star between her fingers. 

Almost two-thousand tonnes of fuel is a vast improvement to what she has.

Less than two parsecs from her carefully hidden ship the _The Jolly Roger_ is in fixed orbit over the moon. She's tracked six shuttles leaving the ship since they entered orbit earlier this morning. None have returned. Unlike Emma, the crew of the _Jolly Roger_ have been leisurely making their way along, stopping and restocking on planets and ports on what is starting to feel like the whims of their captain. 

She'd been waiting, watching - getting the feel for their off-ship excursions in order to plan her own excursion, but maybe the time for waiting is over.

The _Jolly Roger_ is a stocked ship - more importantly, it's a ship that could easily get her where she needs to be in a fraction of the time the _Bug_ could. It's a big temptation, made doubly so as she'd be within her rights to confiscate her bounty's ship.

"Okay," she whispers, squaring her shoulders as she throws weeks of careful planning out of the window. "No room for mistakes on this one."

Emma reflects on the information she'd dug up, what Billy had shared, and the carefully edited stories Granny had told her of her own encounters with Corrvetees during the war.

She's learned enough from shaking up drunks on backwater moons, reached out of enough of her contacts, and bribed enough disgruntled men to fill in some more of the blanks and she'd got what's amounting to a rough picture of her target. She knows that Hook considers himself a pirate - not a normal pirate but a classical pirate straight out of the old tales from Earth-that-Was. He comes complete with a massive ego and a personally crafted code of honor.

Emma knows all about ego, knows the corners it will get you backed into if you're not careful. She doesn't know much about honor but she'd spent enough time watching Graham doing stupid and dangerous things in its name to know it's not much better. 

Breathing deeply, she runs her hands over the well-worn controls of her ship and hopes she's not about to make the biggest mistake of her life - one that might also cost Ruby hers. 

Emma runs a new scan and waits, the hum of static filling her tension at each second that passes. The other ship still reads like it's in standby mode. Of the original crew of forty-odd souls, she'd been stalking only four heat signatures are left registered on the _Jolly Roger_. 

She doesn't trust the computers, she'd learned that lesson already, but she also can't ignore that even with a margin of error this large is likely to be her best chance.

+

It's easy enough to sneak a decent distance away from the _Jolly Roger_, easier still to rig up _Bug_ to look like it's in an uncontrolled and stuttering spin. All the damage to her coms is, unfortunately, very real by necessity. The recorded SOS is the hardest part in the end. Artfully applied smudges of oil on her face, tousled hair, and burning the whole pack of incense Marco had gifted her last year helps provides the correct visual queues. She splices her video with static and audio tweaks until it looks authentic enough.

She double and triple checks everything before changing into the full red ATMO suit and test sealing her helmet to it. Confident in her equipment she moves on to her tiny chest of drawers that had taken her and Billy's strength to wedge into the engine room. She skips the first two drawers - tools are replaceable and not necessary for what she has planned - and pulls open the third drawer. Both sets of cuffs get slipped into various pockets on her suit. She pockets her IdentiCard and chit as well, continuing to shuffle absently through the random bits of clothing and weapons that have accumulated over the years. 

Nothing worth taking.

The last drawer, however, contains the items she can't afford to leave behind. Mostly empty except for two pairs of pants that get thrown to the floor she carefully pries open the false bottom - incase any Alliance patrols decided to poke around - and throws that away as well. 

_I wasn't so sure about this at first,_ Granny had told her when she'd handed off the suitcase to Emma, _but crazier things have saved lives._

At the time Emma hadn't thought much of it, simply another necessary precaution that came along with spending too much time with Jefferson. She'd nodded along to Granny's warnings and looked suitably agreeable about Billy's accusations that Granny had finally lost it if she thought she could use him as a lab rat without his knowledge. They'd all gotten lunch afterward and for some reason Emma remembers that part much more clearly.

The package had been gathering dust since that day. Stuffed in the drawer alongside all the other oddities and deadly trinkets Granny had foisted off on Emma - the normal-looking water bag laced with hallucinatory agents, the pen that turned into a mini-crossbow, and the tablet that housed several skeleton keys - mostly forgotten until now.

Carefully, Emma unfolds the parchment wrapping around the package to reveal three delicate looking silver tubes no bigger than a fist and a whistle on a thin gold chain. 

The tubes fit easily enough in between her jacket and bodysuit and when the jacket is closed up to her chin and the waist is attached to the built-in belt on the bottom half of the suit there's no chance of losing them. The necklace gets slipped over her head and under the jacket to rest alongside her others. Fitting the oxygen tanks into her suit is the final step before donning her helmet and sending out the SOS.

Any moment now the _Jolly Roger_ will discover her tiny ship, spinning out of control, and hear a desperate woman's pleas for aid in exchange for a portion of the vaccines she's transporting. 

"Too late to chicken out now," Emma muses, taking one last look around. 

There's nothing she can't lose on this ship, nothing left out that's even worth taking. It's a painful realization that what amounts to the closest thing to a home Emma's ever had is still so easily expendable. She takes a deep breath and quickly shoves that thought away.

Working confidently around thick gloves Emma closes the hatch behind her. Checking her tether for the fourth time she moves to the console inside the tiny docking port and engages the emergency shutdown of _Bug_'s gravity plating. 

"Fuck this part," she mutters as she rolls her shoulder and wills her body to go lax when everything screams for her to tense.

The steady hum that's surrounded Emma for so long fades away and she dials open the outer hatch just in time to -

Her jaw clenches against her will, teeth punishing the tip of her tongue until the faint taste of blood can't be ignored.

+

Sudden decompression is not recommended - even _with_ ATMO suits - for a fucking reason.

Emma nearly vomits twice, the third time she manages to choke what little comes up back down before it escapes and compromises her line of sight. Her line of sight is, however, a pointless thought as she still can't seem to convince her body to open her eyes over the screaming pain that burns all across her body and focuses sharply at her temple.

She's not sure how long she drifts inside the docking port, but by the time her head and body are mostly willing to work _with_ her she can see the soft glow of an engine illuminating the corner to her left. She keeps one hand on her tether and pulls until she can line her feet against the bulkhead and she pushes lightly off. Carefully she peeks over the edge, and holy _shit_, it's not a scavenging shuttle she expected.

"No way I'm this lucky," she rasps, watching as the _Jolly - fucking - Roger_ itself opens its airlocks to let three suited up bodies on tethers out. 

Emma unhooks her tether, quickly scaling the handholds and following them over and around the side of _Bug_. 

The waiting is the worst part, Emma's heart thumping madly in her chest as she does her best to estimate their distance in relation to her. When she's sure - really sure that they must have already entered the ship - she makes her move, pulling up and gliding out of the hatch slowly until she's aligned _just_ right with the still open airlock they'd exited from. 

She knows better than to worry about any noise she might make - the 'verse will swallow that up for her. Her too, if she misses.

She doesn't look back to check their progress as they undoubtedly begin to loot her ship, she simply adjusts her posture and triggers the burst from her boots. 

+

She leaves her helmet on as she makes her way past the _Jolly Roger_'s airlock decompression room, one hand unsealing the top of her jacket while the other keeps a firm grip on her pistol. 

Her head still feels like it's being split open and there's a slight falter to her steps as a result, but she makes sure there is no falter in her hands.

If she's lucky enough none of the shuttles returned to the _Jolly Roger_ while she was disoriented. If she's really lucky her sensors were accurate on her last scan she's up against one soul. Still, Emma's not about to take any unnecessary risks.

The best thing about Alliance flagships is that it comes equipped with all the fancy tech that costs more than the wealth of all the planets and moons on the rim combined. Things like EMP guns, immunizational protein packs that taste like real food, and of course the built-in detection and quarantine systems.

Emma waits until she's in the elevator before popping the top of the first tube and throwing it down into the hallway below her. 

It takes less than ten seconds before the angry klaxons start blasting as warnings about unknown pathogens are screamed in Mandarin and English for the crew to remain calm. A thick metal sheet drops down around the elevator, separating Emma from the bottom deck as it locks down.

Emma pauses the elevator long enough to repeat the process on the second deck before resuming her trip.

"_You're not being very sporting,_" comes a voice over the coms.

She considers silence, but curiosity gets the best of her. "Is this Hook?"

"_A rose by any other name, darling,_" drawls the amused voice, "_And who might you be?_"

Emma rolls her eyes but feels a rush of relief. She couldn't ask for a better mark than a man with more swagger than sense. 

"_Well?_" He prompts her.

"Doesn't matter. I'm here to arrest you."

Laughter floods the com, it sounds warm but there's a wave of sticky anger in it that makes Emma wonder if she's read the situation all wrong or-

"_This is your last chance to flee,_" he warns in a low voice. "_If you continue on this path you won't be able to say I didn't warn you._"

"I'll take that under advisement."

+

It's a _big_ fucking ship.

_Annoyingly_ big.

Two of three decks are still sealed off - and from the angry chatter she's picking up on the coms she found in one of her cleared rooms the first shuttle has returned but has been unable to dock. They're debating cutting their way in, and oh, she wishes they'd try. She's read enough about the quarantine systems the Alliance has developed to know that forcing your way in or out of an infected area is a recipe for disaster. The bank vaults in the best banks in the Core would be easier to breach. Ever since Miranda happened the Alliance has built their ships around the medical override features - _not_ the other way around.

Still, she's running out of both time and luck. Clearing an unfamiliar ship of this size room by room, hallway by hallway on a search for the bridge is taking longer than she expected and she still has no idea what kind of numbers and weaponry she's truly going up against.

It's not like she really has a lot left to lose, she reasons. On a whim she grabs the found com and patches it into hers.

"One of these days I'm going to learn how to plan ahead," she promises herself. "If I _live_ long enough."

It's not hard to link up the systems to her helmet, and after a quick search of static she quickly finds the placid silence of an open signal.

"Hook?"

There's a pause, but finally "_Have you come to your senses and decided to surrender, lass?_" 

Emma rolls her eyes, "Have you?"

He laughs again, this time he's purely amused.

"So, I heard you're really into the whole _pirate_ thing," she's letting her mouth run ahead of her mind, but she can't be bothered to care. "Heard from an angry little guy named Smee that you even consider yourself a man of honor."

"You've done your homework," he praises. "I'm faltered."

"I aim to please," she deadpans. "But I am curious to know if it's true - if you have any honor or if you're just another thug playing make-believe." 

"_Darling,_" he purrs, "_I am many things, but above all else I am a slave to my honor._"

If it wasn't for her already abused body, Emma thinks she might have beat her own head into the wall. She settles for rolling her eyes. "So if you made a wager you'd keep your word - even if you lost?"

There's a pause. "_Would I be correct in assuming you're about to propose a wager, pet? Because I must say-_"

"Actually, I was going to propose duel," Emma says, actively questioning her life choices that lead to this conversation.

"_Say what you will about my honor, but surely you don't think so little of me as to assume I'd trust someone who's demonstrated such poor form as yourself to maintain any manner of honor._"

"Oh, I think you're gonna do it." In fact, she's betting her life on it.

"_And pray tell why I would trust the woman who snuck out of the black to both trespass on and abuse my vessel?_" 

He's trying for cocky, but Emma hears the curiosity. 

"Because," she says sweetly, "you had two minutes before I locked down the lower level where you could have vented the whole section - including me - into space. But you didn't. The way I see it I've been winning this game long before you even knew I existed and you're not used to losing." Emma pauses, letting that sink in.

She flexes her hand around her pistol, but lowers her weapon to her side before purposefully looking directly at one of the hallway security cameras. 

She channels Ruby in her smile and tries not to dwell on it, "I think you'd like to know who'd win in a fair fight."

For a moment there's only silence, and then the sigh that means she's won.

She follows his directions towards their meeting place, winding through the halls with her pistol riding in her holster and her helmet off and in hand - just like she promised. On the scale of stupid things she's done, yeah, it's up there.

+

She waits, helmet in hand for him.

She's careful to hide her sigh of relief when she sees him around the corner. As promised, he's also unarmed - if you don't count the hook. He stills at the opposite end of the hall and stands silently. Emma thinks briefly of Earth-that-Was vids about mavericks and their showdowns at noon. How anyone survived that ancient era of solicitous gunslingers is truly baffling. 

How this encounter will end is equally bewildering.

He's smiling at her, his head canted back and posture lazy. She thinks absently that Hook's blurry pictures did him no justice. He's darkly handsome and he's dressed to match the swagger that he speaks so fluently. His leathers wouldn't look all out of place at some of the gaudier events in the Core Emma's seen picture of, but out here on the rim his fashion sense is almost too much. 

_Almost_, unfortunately, because somehow the coat, the elaborate waistcoat, the kohl, and even the prosthetic hook manage to work for him. 

A younger Emma probably would have swooned over him the way she suspects he's accustomed too. That girl would have enjoyed the thrill and danger of a dashing pirate who dressed the part. Unfortunately for Hook, this Emma is a woman content to simply file away the memory of him for another day. 

"I half expected to meet a bullet as soon as I rounded the corner," he takes her in with an overly appreciative sweep of eyes. 

Emma shrugs, "I gave you my word."

"Aye, that you did," he seems pleased by this. 

Men with notions of honor are often confusing, but they're also terribly basic when it comes to manipulation. 

"I must say I had hoped it wouldn't have come to this and you'd have come to your senses and surrender peacefully." Hook shakes his head in mock sorrow but Emma hears the ring of a carefully hidden truth. 

"Not my style," She stays right where she is and makes no move near her sidearm, content instead to cross her arms over her chest, her helmet hanging awkwardly from her hand with the motion.

Hook leers. "No, it's not, is it? While I'm not opposed to jumping right in, I do think perhaps we'd both enjoy it if we took some time to…" he smiles, his tongue sliding slowly across his canine, "get to know each other a little bit. I'm very convincing once you give me a chance, and there's no reason today has to end in viol-"

"Look, I'm kinda in a rush. Is anyone from your crew currently on this ship?" Before he can think too much on that she adds, "I don't want any nasty surprises."

She receives an appraising look and eventually curt shake of his head from him. 

"No, it's just us." 

His words are true but his tone is honeyed and about as real as the paperwork Emma uses for _Bug_ when she docks on Core planets. She steels herself. Hook clearly isn't as ridiculous as he dresses. He moves the fold of his coat back under the guise of casual posturing, his hand resting just above his belt where, true to Emma's earlier request, two sheathed swords hang.

"I know I'm seeing the swords with my own eyes…. but it's still hard to believe that Smee was telling the truth about them." 

"They're as real as they are sharp," he says slowly. "Are you still certain, darling? Because I must say, I fear you've underestimated the dangers you're toying with. This is no game, and when my sword-"

"I'm certain," Emma cuts him off unapologetically. "Granny always said to never surrender to pirates."

"Wise woman," he acknowledges, his hand dropping to rest loosely over the first sword's hilt. "However, I'm left to wonder if she's so accepting of you challenging them to duels?" 

"I only accept the duels I know I'll win." She smiles brightly and Hook echoes her false mirth with his own dangerous smile. Unknowns to him inside her helmet she carefully uses her thumb to depress the release on her last tube. She takes in a deep breath through her nose before turning the helmet upside down.

Hook barely has time to narrow his eyes before the tube and cap come clattering down to the floor, faintly yellow gas visible as it escapes it's pressurized cage. Emma doesn't watch the show of emotions that start to play over his face, too busy hurriedly shoving her helmet back on and sealing it.

"_You_-" He steps forward, his previous swagger fumbling into a shuffle as he begins to blink heavily. 

"Me," Emma agrees neutrally, watching as he starts to grasp the entirety of the situation. 

He scrambles for the panel on the _Jolly Roger's_ hull but Emma crosses the distance and takes out his knees before he can do any thing. His eyes spit barely contained venom towards her.

"You have," he seethes between deep breathes, slumping to the floor clearly against his wishes, "_no_ honor."

"I can live with that," she assures him. She's willing to live with a lot of things and cross a lot of lines if it means she'll get to Ruby before anyone else does.

Hook's look is an ugly, dangerous thing and Emma is painfully aware that had her plan not worked she would have had hell to pay. Instead, she cocks her head to the side and watches him. She resists the urge to ask what it feels like to lose so badly because of something as simple as a belief in another's integrity, but she's been where he is and remade herself into something stronger in its wake. She wonders if he will too but resists the urge to tell explain to him that this is one of the most important lessons he'll learn.

He manages to slur something unintelligible at her in a hoarse voice.

"Didn't catch that, but I'm pretty sure it's not the worst thing I've ever been called," she moves to the panel Hook had leapt towards and begins fiddling with the interior control panel. She runs a quick scan, verifying the ship is empty except for them and discovering a second and third shuttle have joined the first one in attempts to reenter the _Jolly Roger_.

Emma returns her attention to Hook, his pupils already blown wide and having trouble tracking her movements from where he is laying, mostly face down, slumped to the floor. It's a familiar enough look these days, but unlike with Jefferson she knows to keep her distance. She keeps a careful eye on both his hand and his hook as she rolls him over with the toe of her boot. 

With efficient movements she ducks down and unbuckles his belt enough to slide off the still sheathed swords. There's a fire in his eyes as he watches her, undiluted by the drugs that pull him towards oblivion. 

She is tempted to tell him that his rage isn't the first she's seen, but it feels cruel. Sometimes rage is all you have - and considering she just took control of his ship and locked his crew out…

"Your crew will live," she assures him. "My ship is still mostly functional and there are three of your own shuttles are out there right now."

Hook opens his mouth to say something but his head falls heavily to the floor before he can manage it. Emma waits to the count of twenty before she makes short work of cuffing his wrists and ankles before carefully attempting to remove his hook. It's sharper than it looks and is rather cleverly attached so it takes her a few tries and more than a few drops of blood before it's off. For the lack of better storage ideas Emma slides it into one of her belt loops. 

With Hook and the ship secured Emma makes her way towards where she sorely hopes the cockpit is waiting.


	9. Chapter 9

It takes one warning shot for the shuttles to stop trying to dock with the ship.

On the other hand, it takes her four tries and more than a few threats to the shuttles to clear a path for her and to coax the ship to break orbit. It takes six frantic attempts and some good old fashioned button mashing to persuade the _Jolly Roger_ to accept a new destination. Even then, it's almost like the ship doesn't trust her. Any course correction she makes takes nearly twenty minutes to take effect and only lasts three or four hours before the ship ignores them and tries to return to its original course.

Adjusting thrusters? Emma learns pretty quickly that it won't happen without the current information on how the deck planes and the acceleration planes are affecting the need for artificial gravity. Asking for an ETA? Not without you personally gathering all the stats from the communications and radar station and manually entering them on the main console.

Emma has flown touchy ships, stock ships, and ships held together in ways that shouldn't have worked. However, she's _never_ flown a ship that seemed to want to punish her and objects to her presence on such a fundamental level. 

"Keep this up - Billy can always use more scrap metal," Emma hisses, stabbing in coordinates in for the third time in two hours. 

The console beeps smartly back at her, calmly prompting for verification _again_.

+

Emma coms Granny the moment things start to even out. She's only slightly unsurprised when her com gets screened by Billy. 

"Emma? Where the hell are you sending this from? It's setting off red flags all across the sy-"

"Not important," she says pushing some hair back out of her face wearily, wincing as a few strands get caught in the thin gash on her index finger she got from the hook. "For simplicities sake can we skip this and you'll just lock this in the system as me for the moment?"

Billy watches her over for a second, finally nodding when nothing seems too off. "New ship?"

Emma tries to smile, tries not to notice how bad he looks. "Only until I'm back. You couldn't pay me to keep this piece of shit. But, if I'm lucky and the main computer doesn't have anything else up its sleeve it should be able to get me to Santos in a week or two. Just update me if you guys get a better heading to chase."

Billy gives her a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "We appreciate it. Granny and I spent the last two days calling in pretty much every favor in the 'verse. No luck yet, but you’ll be the first to hear if we do." 

Emma tries to comprehend that and fails. Granny's connections are vast and loyal. They _really_ should have heard something already. Ruby is impressive in many ways – but not in the way where she runs off and can’t be found by people who find for a living.

"Nothing?" Emma confirms, "As in - we have _no idea_ where to start looking for her outside of around Santo?"

"We've got people sniffing around, but we've found zero proof she was ever there." Billy shrugs helplessly. "Our original source was less than reputable and it's looking like he might have just been after the reward money." His voice cracks and Emma is painfully reminded that she and Granny aren't the only people who have a vested interest in finding Ruby safe and sound.

She takes a moment to absorb everything. "So, what happened? I mean, Ruby just… _left_?"

"Well," he shifts uncomfortably, "there was a fight."

Emma narrows her eyes. There are always fights with Ruby, but there's _never_ been storming out. "What about?"

Billy's eyes flash and for a moment he looks far too old for his skin. "Not with me," he says in a hard tone. "Also… not my place to say. But Ruby wasn't thinking straight when she left, she…" He runs an agitated hand over his scalp, "She's always been _here_. Granny's always protected her from everything she could - more than she should have if you ask me - but… Ruby's never been alone _out there_, you know?"

"I do," Emma knows all too well that Billy wasn't always living in the apartment down the hall from Ruby. He hides it well, but Emma has seen the quickness of his hands, the sharpness of his eyes, and knows he only makes noise when he _wants_ too. 

If they were different people - people who liked to reflect on their pasts instead of running from them - she thinks that they'd have a lot of stories to share. It's one of the reasons that they're friends but not friendly. They need Ruby to stand between their jagged edges, they need her to protect and buffer them so they don't scrape each other raw on accident.

Emma rallies a confidence she doesn't feel. "We're gonna find her. Keep me informed on any updates, okay?"

Billy nods, looking like there's something more he needs to say to her but that he can't bring himself too. Billy is good at keeping Ruby's secrets - Granny and Emma's too when needed. Over the years he's gone from disbelief to a silent acknowledgment of Emma's ability to spot a lie. She knows it's why he looks her in the eyes when he lies. It's not an apology, but it is an understanding. 

Right now, though, it looks like pleading. He wants her to ask, and the self-hate is clear enough that Emma looks away.

She won't push- she has her own secrets and she knows the lengths she's gone to keep them. Even worse, she has bloody dreams about the lengths she'd go to if Ruby or Granny asked it of her. For this reason, she cuts the com between her and the _Den_, she lets Billy keep silent.

There's a burning in her eyes and Emma is content to blame it on the fact that she decompressed like an idiot and hasn't slept in almost thirty hours. Outside the bridge's window the stars are blurring around the ship at speeds that Emma's not used to seeing. Underneath her feet, an unfamiliar ship's engine hums too loudly and off-tune in her ears. Her hand closes around Graham's charm, and for a brief moment, she allows herself to image a 'verse where she could still com him and have him understand just how scared she is without having to tell him. 

Ruby would have liked Graham, she thinks. Would have teased him the way she teases Emma, leaving her unsure if she wants to run or hold on to Ruby as tight as she can.

Ruby…

"We're gonna find you," she promises. 

Around her, the unfamiliar patterns of _Jolly Roger_ are still chaotic and overwhelming, but not enough that Emma misses the tread of footsteps behind her. 

"The only thing you're finding, _pet_, is trouble." Hook's scratchy voice does nothing to mask his anger. 

Emma turns to watch him, noticing the stupidly expensive cuffs she'd purchased specifically for amputees like Hook that are currently dangling uselessly from his hand and one of his ankles.

She frowns, "Those were supposed to be top of the line."

"_Pirate_," Hook says with a sneer, jiggling the cuff on his arm for show. "I'm afraid you're going to have to try harder."

"If you insist," Emma pulls her newest necklace up, puts the whistle to her lips and _blows_.

Across from her Hook' face contorts in pain, a forearm and hand trying to vain to protect his ears from the onslaught. Emma stops long enough to take a deep breath and repeats the process until he's fully on the floor in a fetal position. 

"You're experiencing a side effect of the gas - one that Billy found out about the hard way. Normally you're just a little groggy, but if you're exposed to loud sounds it can trigger some really nasty pain." Emma drinks in his anger uncaring. When she brings her fist down he doesn't flinch away, doesn't even break eye contact. 

It's not good to enjoy the sight of him crumpling to the floor, she knows, but sometimes it's nice to not be the only person having a bad day.

"Good thing you wore that belt," she begins assessing Hook's prone form and old fashioned pilot's chair - complete with two very useful armrests. "Time to get creative."

+

In retrospect, she should have taken his jacket the first time. Spinning lazily in the com's chair Emma manages to create a small pile of all manner of items that she's pulled the various and well-hidden pockets. She digs out three electronic lock-pick sets, two pieces of dried meat, what appears to be three journals full of gibberish, two standard lock-pick sets, and five flasks filled with various levels of dubious alcohol that smells like burning before she gives up the hunt.

Clearly the jacket more than a fashion statement.

Still passed out in the pilot's chair, Hook's head is lolled back, still looking startlingly dramatic when framed with the rest of his outfit. It's not long before Emma's wondering what else might be hidden on the remaining clothes and if his belt, her belt, and two sets of cuffs will manage to hold this pirate.

"Of _course_ a ship this problematic could only belong to someone like you," she accuses his body when the coms starts chiming for attention _again_. 

+

Emma finds the first secret compartment in the _Jolly Roger_ by accident - a long day and a need for a stiff drink leaves her exhausted enough to lean against the hallway corridor just long enough for it to shoulder some of her weight. She doesn't expect a small section of wall by her shoulder to depress, then push out to give access to what appears to be a collection of impressive but ultimately _counterfeit_ identity files for the what seems to be Hook and at least a dozen other men and women.

The second and third secret compartments are found while trying to determine if the empty cabin next to the cockpit would be a reasonable and secure place to store Hook. Judging from the weapons in the third compartment, Emma is guessing that's a no to both of them.

"I hate you," she informs a conscious but groggy looking Hook when she returns to the bridge. "More importantly, why the hell do you have a laser canon disassembled and hidden under the floor in your galley?"

Hook smirks, managing to look bored with everything despite being tied to a chair against his will. "If you're upset by that then I take it you haven't found the _really_ good hiding spots."

Emma buries her head in her hands. Of-fucking-course there's not even a _hint_ of a lie in his statement.

+

Despite what Emma has implied to Ruby about washing out the cargo hold she's yet to break any of the rules on humane prisoner transportation. It's not glamorous and it's certainly not the most comfortable situation for bounty or captor - but there are methods.

Step one is always the same. Control. Control the environment, make sure any and all surprises are coming from you. 

Emma picks the first crew cabin she finds that has porn and booze instead of weapons stashed in what is looking like a standard-issue hidey-hole near the door. She walks and rewalks the path over and over, running searching hands and kicking her feet at the walls until she's as certain as she can be that it's clear. She locks all the other cabin doors and manually lowers and secures several fire doors so that the trip from the bridge to the restroom she'd chosen only goes from point A to B. 

Lastly, all personal effects in the cabin from the toothbrush to the clothes all get thrown in a blanket and hauled into another room. Non-bolted down furniture and decorations go next. Sharp edges on the metal bunk frame get rounded down with torn towels and excessive amounts of electrical tape. Electrical interfaces get plastic sheeting over them and even more tape.

Step two is less easy. Controlling the prisoner while also giving them a gentle-ish reminder about who was in charge. 

There's a reason prisons don't let you bring your own clothes with you, Graham had told her once. Emma had smiled like a woman who'd never spent months rotting in an Alliance prison and when transporting prisoners of her own she was content to spare the well-behaved ones that step more often than not. However, after seeing Hook's coat she's not skipping it _this_ time.

Luckily Emma finds a set of scrubs in the med bay after a little digging. With the aid of a tiny taser (found inside the compartment that held the scrubs, funnily enough) Hook seems to understand that it's not a suggestion that he change. 

He bares his teeth for show, but more importantly, he picks up the scrubs and one-handedly begins to unbutton his leather waistcoat. Emma watches, each movement, familiar enough with how wrong things can go if you aren't careful. 

"You like to watch, love?" He makes a show of sliding off the waistcoat and slowly pulling up his shirt. 

It's predictable, a jeer at her that nearly every person she's ever had to watch undress seemed compelled to make to regain some footing.

"Oh _yeah_. Just another one of the perk of the job," Emma pointedly looks him over, and shrugs. "I've seen better."

The look Hook gives her implies her he doubts it, but Emma sees the angry curl of his lip as he bends to pull off his boot that says he's not used to his charms falling flat. 

"Just so you know," she gestures towards him with the taser, "whatever you're thinking of trying? I've probably seen it at least a dozen times already and I'm not stupid enough to drop my guard _or_ my panties with the likes of you."

"_The likes of me?_" Hook echoes, a sly smile spreading over his lips. "Darling, I can _guarantee_ you've never met the likes of me."

Emma motions for him to get on with it, all the while trying to pretend there isn't a twinge at the base of her skull there's that warns of _caution, caution_.

Step three is the worst. 

"Until you prove untrustworthy I'll be outside the door," she tells him as she turns on the tap in the sink. "_Right_ outside." She keeps one eye on him and closes the drain. He bites back whatever comment he was going to make as the shallow basin already threatens to overflow.

"I don't know if you're aware, but water is a precious resource in space."

"I'm aware," Emma assures him, not bothering to turn her attention from him as the heavy wet drops that start to echo next to her. 

She knows the moment he understands. He looks from his newly bare feet to the quickly dampening floor of the bathroom, then up to where the taser is tucked carefully into Emma's side.

"Well," he says drawing the word out, "aren't you a dangerous thing."

Emma feels incredibly weary, "Not if you cooperate."

\+ 

He's easier to secure into the chair without his layers. The scrubs and his now smudged kohl makes him look a bit like a poster child for one of the luxury bug-houses for rich addicts that they advertise for in the Core.

"I'm going to get loose eventually," he warns her as she re-cuffs his good hand to the chair.

Emma ignores him, the console had been screaming for her attention for a while now and she can't afford to give them both the attention they need. 

+

"I don't understand your ship," she confesses, hands tugging angrily at her hair.

She doesn't expect his help and he doesn't offer it. Instead, he starts humming under his breath. 

Emma curses, "Can you _not_?"

"_Let every man here drink up his full bumper,_" he starts to sing. "_Let every man here drink up his full bowl, and let us be jolly and drown melancholy, drink a health to each jovial an’ true-hearted soul._"

+

_The Jolly Roger's_ galley is big enough to fit at least a dozen of the tiny rooms that Emma serves as the _Bug_'s galley. Despite this, Emma can not find a single thing she can grab and eat. It's quickly becoming a problem as she'd tied to the ship's computer every hour on the hour to deal with whatever ridiculous reason it's come up with this time that it thinks warrants a memory dump of all recent commands issued. She has no idea how she's going to find time to rest- much less prepare a meal, monitor coms for nearby traffic or problems, _and_ make sure the ship doesn't decide to implode just to spite her.

Asking Hook for help is right off - after two attempted escapes, songs that devolved into dirty limericks, and a comment disguised as helpful input that almost ended with her almost overheating the engine she's learned her lesson. 

For now, she makes do with grabbing a handful of dry veggie protein noodles, a bag of water, a handful of vitamins, and what appears to be and uncooked tube of protein paste. 

"You have _got_ to be kidding me," Hook says when she presents the tube to him.

"It's this or the noodles," Emma demonstrates the joys of dry noodles by snapping off a jagged piece and doing her best to chew it up into small enough pieces that it won't slice up her throat before she swallows them. Hook watches the entire process with morbid fascination.

His right damnable eyebrow is up again. "You know you're supposed to _cook_ those, right?"

"I don't know if you've noticed but I'm not exactly rolling in the free time lately." 

"If it means a not having to eat _that_ I'd gladly offer up my services as your personal chef."

"Riiiiight," Emma doesn't have time for this. "Well you have two options: eat this now," she waves the tube in front of him, "or don't. I don't have time to fight you on this and I won't be put out if you skip a meal."

Hook starts to speak but she stops him with a look, "Keep in mind that if you become a distraction, I _will_ gag you."

After a tense moment of silence Hook opens his mouth for her and manages to only grimace a little at the taste. 

+

By her twenty-sixth hour on the ship, Emma drags herself down to the med bay - and how novel to have an actual med bay instead of an overstuffed but somehow always lacking first-aid kid. The discovery of an entire cabinet stocked full of medicine worth easily it's weight in platinum is the crowning glory of the ship. Familiar names are easy enough to pick out, memories of almost forgotten whispers from a long-dead boy guide her to the right vials. 

Her face burns from shame at how easy it is to pick up long what she had thought were long abandoned hobbies. Memories of being too young and too scared to do much more than run and hide are reflected back on the surface of every bottle.

With three vials in one hand and a syringe in the other, she finds herself chuckling, but it mutates into angry laughter before Emma can think to contain it. She's known for a while that she's reaching her peak - stretching so thin she can't even be sure she's still all there. 

Her body has been all but screaming for relief, unwilling to understand that sleep isn't an option right now. 

It's not the first time she's had to resort to this, but god, Emma wishes it could be the last.

+

There's a period of what feels like hours where Emma's brain swims free, focusing on everything and anything while her heart pounds a frantic staccato in her chest. By the time it passes her face is wet and her lip is bleeding sluggishly from where she bit through it.

Only twenty minutes have passed between the needle and lucidity, but Emma knows it won't always be that easy.

In the cockpit Hook is still tied up and asleep, thankfully unable to comment on Emma's return. She watches his chest rising and falling with a terrible envy.

+

He's been passed out for almost an hour when the panic hits her. It's not unexpected but it is unwanted and makes Emma need to hide. Leaving the bridge isn't a luxury she has thought, any minute now the computer will act up and need her attention all over again. 

The _Jolly Roger's_ cockpit is huge compared to _Bug_, the two massive consoles and their respective chairs end up taking up most of the space, but there's enough room between the hull and the start of the consoles. After double and triple-checking that his breathing hasn't changed she lets herself sink down to the floor between the main console and the hull, carefully out of Hook's view.

Her heartbeat has been manic bordering on painful since the injection, but she knows that a good cry usually helps that level out a bit. She allows herself the luxury, one hand clamped carefully over her mouth to ensure her secret stays kept between her and the hull. 

When Emma's face is dry again and her hands are steady she climbs slowly out to the sounds of Hook's soft snoring.

+

She coms Jefferson, knowing full well his com is likely disabled. 

She thinks she understands him better than ever and wishes he would stop stalking whatever government agent pinged his radar long enough to com her prove her wrong.

"I'm having a bad day," Emma tells the dead air and hopes his madness isn't all madness. Hopes that maybe he heard her the way he claims he can. Her only answer is the soft breathing of Hook behind her.

+

During their next com Billy spends half the conversation looking just beyond Emma's shoulder. 

"Just ask," Emma allows. Self-medication has evened her out enough to handle whatever it is that Billy needs to ask, but she’s not sure how long that will be the case. "Get it out of your system."

"Why is there a man tied up and gagged behind you?"

"Dirty limericks," Emma answers in all honestly. Behind her Hook is making muffled noises into his makeshift gag while she pointedly ignores him. 

They share a tiny moment where their eyes meet and they both smile before they both sober back up guiltily.

Billy clears his throat, looking away from her. "I'll keep you updated, yeah?"

"Thanks," she tries to smile but it feels all wrong and she ends up signing off instead.

Now is not the right time, but Emma can't help reflecting on the angry boy she knew that has turned into the man before her. It's impressive, to say the least. 

Emma keeps flipping through the main systems overviews as she waits, doing her best to ignore what continues to sound like a muffled continuation of Hook's lively tune from earlier.

"I was thinking of letting you stretch your legs for a little bit today," she muses without turning around. "But that doesn't _have_ to happen."

The humming stops immediately.


	10. Chapter 10

It takes a second injection for Emma to find the energy to make good on her bribe, but she does. With the taser and their experiences with his bathroom trips to build from she unties Hook and lets him pace and stretch in the confines of the cockpit. He spends most of his free time itching his nose and leaning against the wall, rotating one leg after the other as he sizes her up.

Still, he's either smart enough not to test her and never once breaks the invisible boundaries she'd placed around the equipment.

"So," he says lazily.

"Yup," Emma agrees.

+

She's buckling him back in, too focused on his hands and his limbs to notice the way he's looking at the bend of her elbow until it's too late. Emma bristles, tightening his cuffs perhaps a little more than necessary. He watches her, his face coming to an understanding not unlike he had as he stood on the wet bathroom tiles.

"When's the last time you slept?"

They both know the rough answer to that so Emma stays silent, double-checking his leg cuffs.

"Any circulation issues?"

"None," he murmurs. "Darling, I don't mean to pry, but-"

Emma stuffs the makeshift galley towel gag back inside his mouth before he can finish.

"You know the drill, stomp if you need water, food, or the restroom," she reminds him before promptly turning her back on him and returning her attention to the control panels. Right on time, the secondary console starts demanding her attention.

+

Hours drag by. Somewhere along the way, the days start to blur into endless cycles of alarms, horrible meals, bathroom trips, and needles.

Emma makes a point to check the date before connecting any calls to the _Den_.

She sends more and more waves to Jefferson, each bouncing back unable to connect. Emma doesn't care, the same way she doesn't care if Hook is awake when she sends them anymore.

+

She knows the mixture is a delicate balance. It needs a steady hand and a clear mind- both things Emma isn't sure she'll always have, so she does what she does best and adapts. She finds a rhythm in the pain.

She lines the bottles up in rows- four bottles of the red-caped serum, six of the blue bottles, two packs with black lines, and one large clear glass bottle. She fusses over them until they're lined up in neat little uniformed rows.

With careful hands, she grabs a marker and proceeds to adorn the remaining syringes with four lines on the glass. Next to the first line she writes _red_, _blue_ on the second, then _black_, the last line is left alone. She double and triple checks the lines against each other until she's sure they're correct.

Lastly, she forces the words until they fit into a catchy enough tune she only half remembers. _15 red, 20 blue, 57 black, 8 clear_.

It'll have to do.

+

She doesn't remember tearing her suit, much less how she managed it, but it happened. The tiny rip on her wrist hard to miss.

That should worry her more than it does. Instead, Emma strips the under-suit off, keeping her tank top and stealing a pair of pants from a random cabin.

+

The angry red dots on her arm burn from time to time, her absent scratching over the days turning them from hardly noticeable to obvious by the time she adds a tenth.

Hook notices the new addition immediately, slipping into his predator guise. His eyes are sharp and focused as they linger over the marks on her skin.

"I'm doing what I have to," she informs him tightly. "People are counting on me."

"Forgive me, Emma," he speaks her name so softly that it sounds like he's trying to soothe a wild animal, "but I imagine those lovely people who keep calling you would prefer you alive to dead, no?"

Emma thinks of Ruby, of her laugh and the way Granny's eyes are always watching the people around her with all the caution and suspicion that Ruby lacks. Emma thinks of her first time alone in a strange port, of the lessons she's still learning about how to traverse her way through the 'verse.

Is what she's doing safe? No. But what she's doing might prevent Ruby from learning some of the cold truths of the 'verse the way that Emma did.

"There's someone who needs my help," she tells him, too tired to care if he can understand what she means.

"As true as that might be I'm beginning to fear that you're also in need of help," he tells her, and she wonders if it's his idea of a plea or a warning. Either way, it's a trap.

Emma laughs, higher and louder than she meant too and his jaw clenches and his eyes shutter at her reaction. She couldn't ask for a more cartoonish example of what kind of person to trust than the man who sits before her. Emma's made more than her share of bad decisions in life, but she hasn't stopped to trusting an honest to god _pirate_ who wears a coat with a thousand hidden pockets, who captains a ship filled with secret panels, and who has already tried to fool her into damaging the ship is an obvious mistake.

"What _possible_ reason could I have to trust you?" She's still laughing, part of her scared she'll never stop.

"Perhaps," he says looking as exhausted as she feels, "I'm hoping to avoid dying strapped to a chair when whatever noxious medication you've been relying on leaves you dead and this ship floating adrift."

Her laughter dries up, and for a moment her frantic heartbeats still and it's all too easy to picture all the ways this could go wrong after days of telling herself everything would work out. She feels like the one held captive at that moment and finds herself desperately wanting to say things that she can't: that she is sorry in some way for the possibility that she'll drag a stranger like him down with her and that in other ways she isn't sorry because it'd be nice to not die alone.

"If you let me, I could help you with the ship - she's a touchy creature, this one, but it is by design." His face screams _trust me_, his hand is open and palm-up from where it's secured to the armrest and Emma finds she can't look away from it.

"I can get you to your port safe and sound, and with two pilots you cou-"

"Sorry," Emma whispers, not meaning it, "but I can't afford to make a mistake as obvious as my captive bounty offering to help me."

+

Emma looks up capture-bonding on the 'net when Hook sleeps that night. When he wakes she reads him an article about the best ways to avoid capture-bonding.

Hook is not amused.

+

_15 red, 20 blue, 57 black, 8 clear_, Emma sings half-heartedly to herself as she taps the air bubbles out.

A brunette woman matching Ruby’s height was caught on camera for a fraction of a second a day ago on Santos, according to Granny. It’s odd, how Emma can barely remember the name of the cocktail she’s preparing but she can do the math on how much space is between her and Santos.

+

When the next com comes in from the _Wolf's Den_ Emma panics when she can't find her jacket. She ends up stealing Hook's ostentatious long-sleeved black shirt from the pile of his clothes she'd hidden in the galley. She rolls the lacy ends of the sleeves up until they hang just above her wrists - long enough to be out of the way while hiding the angry marks on her arms.

Hook watches, safely gagged, and Emma has to swallow down the urge to do something stupid like asking him if she looks like she's been injecting dubious chemical compounds into her body to fend off her body's need for rest that lasts longer than an hour.

She's not sure if it's the sight of the shirt or her that makes Billy stop and stare at her when she answers but she pretends not to noise. She smiles at him, trying desperately to remember the muscle movements. It must not work, because Billy lets it go with a sigh.

"Emma," he says sounding all wrong - sounding like he's _begging_, "promise me you're not doing anything that would break Ruby's heart."

She stops her eyes from sliding left, her brain struggling to find a lie good enough to pass Billy's inspection. "Don't worry about me," she settles on with a smile. "I'm just a little tired."

"Right," he says slowly, his eyes looking right through her.

+

She doesn't have the energy to sing, so she keeps the words inside and makes do with humming _15 red, 20 blue, 57 black, 8 clear_.

+

The doses aren't lasting as long as they used too and Emma finds herself trying everything and anything to squeeze a few moments of lucidity in before giving in. She does endless push-ups and sit-ups in an attempt to keep her mind clear, but it only works so much before her body starts to feel like a punching bag.

"Darling," Hook says when she unties him for his carefully monitored half-hour of freedom, but she tunes him out before he can finish.

+

Jefferson had talked about the 'verse like it was alive, sentient.

Emma remembers thinking that strange, but now, now she wonders what it would say to her if it could speak.

+

"How long have I been here?" Emma asks Hook without thinking. She can't remember the length of time that's passed and thinks it should probably bother her more than it does that she can't remember the date.

The look Hook gives her is enough to make her not care to bother with the answer. It's easier to just turn and go outside the cockpit where Hook can't see her. If she's lucky the computer might even give her an hour or two of freedom before calling her back into its endless games.

+

_15 red, 20 blue, 57 black…_

Emma can't remember the last number, but it's okay, the lines on her needles remember for her.

+

Emma loses almost an hour after her dose the next day, only getting back to the bridge with barely enough time to accept a hail from the _Den_.

On the screen, Granny is silent, unmoving, and looking at Emma like she's slapped her.

"I-"

"You look like shit," Granny observes in a curiously quiet voice.

Emma looks down at herself self consciously, "It's nothing-"

"And you've lost weight," Granny's voice gains strength, becoming steely enough that Emma wants to hide from her.

An uneasy silence falls and Emma finds herself hoping Hook is asleep but too scared to check.

"I'd ask you if you're sleeping, but I think we both know the answer to that," Granny says finally.

"I'm being careful," Emma regrets it the moment it leaves her mouth, hating the way Granny flinches back from her.

"You're being _careful_," Granny repeats in a terrible voice. "Emma, I wake up every morning terrified that I've lost my granddaughter. I already lost her mother, so don't you _dare_ make me worry that I'm losing you too."__

_ _"I won't," Emma clenches her hands under the command center, out of view of the camera, and wishes everything would stop hurting or at least stop hurting the people around her._ _

_ _When they hang up Hook looks her over with something like pity in his eyes._ _

_ _"Just _don't_," she warns him. Her voice comes out a little frantically and her fingers won't stop jumping and clutching at her side. And because today really isn't her day, Hook inclines his head and closes his eyes, feigning sleep and letting her feign privacy. _ _

_ _She knows this trick; knows how kindness can break a person when pain, shame, or loss haven't managed. _ _

_ _“I’m okay. It’s all gonna be okay.”_ _

_ _Hook says nothing, still pretending to sleep._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Emma can't remember her song anymore, and her bottles are rolling haphazardly all over the counter so she has to re-sort them to find which one is supposed to come after the black vial._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Her nose starts to bleed sporadically after her next dose._ _

_ _In a fit of panic and fear, she destroys the video camera that's hooked into the com. Emma blames the lack of video coms on a brush with a meteor belt when Billy calls. He calls her a liar in a voice she doesn't remember hearing him use before. _ _

_ _She wonders if he feels as trapped, as useless as she does. She wonders how he lives with it._ _

_ _"Just a little bit farther," she reminds herself, pressing her nail over the pads of her fingers for a little extra shot of pain to make the world a little bit clearer. Lately, it's been the best way to settle her mind._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Billy brings only more bad news with his next com. Emma watches the video all the way through twice, but it's clear enough that she's watching their best lead crumble and fall apart. _ _

_ _Emma jumps the video back to the beginning and watches the man who'd claimed to have seen Ruby at the edge of Santo's space pacing in a tiny Alliance cell and pleading with the desk officer to let him out on a reduced fee is their informant. _ _

_ _The clocks in the holding room and the timestamps match up perfectly, unlike his story._ _

_ _“You need to stop this, Emma. Look, I can have a ride set up for you within the hour, no matter where you are all the way back home to the Den. Just tell me -“_ _

_ _Emma hangs up. Santos is still the closest thing to a lead they have and Emma is so, _so_ close._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Her next dosage is still hours away and Emma finds she can't stop thinking about it - can't stop trying to find excuses to flee the bridge and find relief. It takes a moment to process what she's feeling but when it does it makes her blood run cold._ _

_ _With that Emma flees the bridge, only barely making it to the restroom before she's throwing up and wiping the sting of bile from her lips._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Her nose won't stop bleeding by her next dose._ _

_ _Granny coms to tell her that there will be a ship hailing her tomorrow to rendezvous and board the _Jolly Roger_ and bring Emma all back to the _Den_._ _

_ _For a moment Emma wonders if she's hallucinating, pressing her nail into the pad of her index finger out of desperation. She’s close. So close. They just can’t see it. _ _

_ _"What ship?"_ _

_ _"The one I sent out when I realized Billy was right," Granny says with an apologetic look. "I've given more than my share to this damned 'verse, I refuse to give you up too, girl."_ _

_ _Emma has nothing to say too that, so she remains silent. Everything is falling apart and Emma knows on some level that if Granny is sending people after her on to get her back to the Den in one piece that they’ll be viewing those as marching orders. And no but Ruby would dare disobeys Granny when she has given an order._ _

_ _It’s all falling apart around her. There’s no Ruby and no Jefferson and she’s so _cold_ these days-_ _

_ _"Emma," she says in a gentler voice, "try to rest. Help is on the way, okay?"_ _

_ _"I don't _need_ help. I just need to get there so I can find Ruby and-"_ _

_ _"Honey, one of these days I hope you come to terms with the fact that you alone aren't responsible for everything that goes wrong in the ‘verse." Granny waits, the com filling with silence between them before Granny finally gives up and signs off with a quiet _be safe_._ _

_ _Inside her, something breaks. _ _

_ _Emma tries to ignore the burning in her chest and keys in the command to view the calendar. The date seems all wrong, and even worse, her fingers keep slipping all over the tiny keys and leaving trails in their wake. Carefully turning around in her chair she holds her hands out in front of herself before turning them towards Hook. _ _

_ _"Are my hands are bleeding? I think they are."_ _

_ _Hook's face and body seem to sag, and then he's closing his eyes and nodding in confirmation. _ _

_ _Without knowing why she gets up and slowly walks towards him, crouching next to him gingerly. He opens his eyes, watching her warily. _ _

_ _It's not a nice look, but it's better than pity. _ _

_ _"People will be here soon," Emma says as she fumbles for the keys in her pocket and wondering why her fingers don't hurt considering how mangled they look. She has to do this while she can._ _

_ _"Tomorrow," she specifies, "whenever _that_ is." Her speech is slurring more than normal, words feeling sticky and wrong on her tongue. She shakes that thought off and focuses on getting the key out._ _

_ _"I don't think I'm going to be much good when they come." It takes two tries, but finally, she gets the key into the hole of the cuff on his ankle. With more effort than she thinks is normal and a loud _clink_ they come undone, falling to the floor between his feet. The belt around his chest and arms comes off next. It's much easier, even if Emma has to stop more than once to wipe the blood from her hands. When the belt securing his prosthetic-clad arm is gone, he doesn't move like she expected. Instead, he stays very, very still as though he's worried he might accidentally set off an explosion if he moves. _ _

_ _She wonders if she's the reason if she's the bomb he seems so scared of. _ _

_ _Emma shakes the thought away and examines the cuffs holding his good hand down before looking up at him. _ _

_ _"I understand if you hate me for this, most bounties do and they've never seen me so…" she doesn't like any of the ways that sentence could end, so she ignores it._ _

_ _She knows that between her coms with Granny and Billy that Hook has long ago figured out what's happening. She finds herself hoping he can understand why she's done the things she has, even if the others can't._ _

_ _Emma remembers the way Ruby liked to watch the crowds pouring out of the hangers and into the _Den_. In those strangers Ruby had always seen something worth smiling over - the triumph of the human soul against the cold silence of the 'verse, stories about love and adventure waiting to be told, and the chance of finding new friends._ _

_ _Emma remembers looking at those same crowds and seeing the limps, the scars, and the cautionary tales to be learned from, and a part of her is willing to wagger that Hook sees the same things. Emma rests her forehead against the metal siding of his chair which is blessedly cool against her face. She finds herself unconsciously rubbing her face against it, searching for a way too cool her head and maybe even her heart. _ _

_ _"I fuck a lot of things up, but the one thing I'm good at is finding people. Once we get a lead on Ruby - I _can_ find… shit." The keys slip from Emma's hands and fall to the floor, and the whole room moves with her when she moves to retrieve them. _ _

_ _"Please," Emma says carefully, lining the tiny keys back up with the cuffs. "Let me have time to find her. If you still wanna kill me afterward, you can. Okay?"_ _

_ _Emma doesn't wait for an answer, and if it comes she can't hear it over the growing static that's roaring in her ears. _ _

_ _The keys fall down, and Emma and the cuffs fall with them._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _There's nothing, and then there's a stout man with a scruffy beard peering at her as she lays on what feels like a bed. _ _

_ _"Hey, you in there, Blondie?"_ _

_ _Emma blinks, unable to find the energy for more._ _

_ _"Doc, _Doc!_ She's awake! Get your ass over here!" He bellows and Emma tries to look where he's looking but-_ _

_ _+_ _

_ _She wakes up long enough to catch sight of another stranger standing over her taking her pulse._ _

_ _"_Shhh,_" he soothes her, and it's only then that she realizes she's crying._ _

_ _"You're almost through the worst of it," he tells her, looking like maybe he can _feel_ the same pain that's raging in her body._ _

_ _Emma wants to argue, to tell him there's always something worse waiting to be unearthed, but then there's a small ruckus as the med bay doors open and then several voices all start speaking at on-_ _

_ _+_ _

_ _The detox blurs most of the ride home into one long acid dream that haunts Emma in and out of sleep. She's vaguely aware of returning to the _Den_, of seeing familiar archways and the smell of oil and salt that means Billy must be nearby. She wants to find him, find Granny, and ask what they've found out about Ruby-_ _

_ _Despite this, she sleeps, strapped an unfamiliar bed for what she's told is her own safety._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Emma grows accustomed to waking up to visitors and hallucinations and even gets used to not always being able to tell which is which. _ _

_ _The ghosts are the easiest to figure out - but that knowledge doesn't do much to soften the pain when they start to yell their disappointment out at her. Some of her visitors have no faces, just blank skin canvasses. Sometimes she thinks she hears Marco's voice, but she never sees him. Billy is there though, quiet and still and always with Ruby by his side. Sometimes there's more than one Billy at a time and sometimes Billy rubs at his face and tells her _no, Ruby isn't here_ and other times he just sits back and says nothing. Sometimes a pirate comes in dressed like he's wearing the black heart of the 'verse stitched into his clothes. He never says anything, just sits and drinks from a flask as he watches her. When she asks if he's death come to finally collect her soul he only laughs. _ _

_ _On the really bad days Granny sits and cries quietly in the chair beside her and asks Emma why she can't figure out how to love herself._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Waking up, _really_ waking up is horrible._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _"Way to be a fucking moron," Dr. Whale tells her over her clipboard. "Seriously, though. I haven't seen a toxicology report that fucked up since med school cadavers. Still, you'll live. Even if you don't want to."_ _

_ _"Fuck you," Emma manages to croak out from her parched throat. _ _

_ _Dr. Whale smiles, empty as the vacuum of space. "That's the spirit, champ!" _ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Granny is waiting for her when she walks out of the hospital, standing still as a statue amongst the crowds wandering through her port. _ _

_ _When Emma gets close enough, Granny's hand reaches out long enough to brush briefly against her arm before returning to her side. Emma isn't sure what to do with that and it seems easier to pretend it never happened, so she does. She stuffs heavily bandaged hands into her borrowed jacket's pockets, clenching them until the blisters and raw flesh protest._ _

_ _"Are you hungry?" Granny finally asks her._ _

_ _Emma isn't, but she nods and lets Granny lead her to a nearby café. After all, a few hours of pretending can't hurt either of them any more than reality has._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _There are questions Emma should ask, statements to be made. Instead, Emma pokes awkwardly at the soup Granny ordered for her with her spoon and tries to wrap her head around _Bug_ not being in the hangers._ _

_ _There's no easy escape route this time and she's not sure how she feels about that._ _

_ _Across the table Granny looks ready to speak again, squaring her shoulders only to sigh and deflate into silence. Her soup is equally untouched. _ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Granny doesn't let Emma out of her sight for the rest of the day. She drags her along as she makes her rounds, lets her sit in the plush visitor's chairs when she does paperwork, and when Emma gets ready to apply more salve to her hands it's Granny who unwraps and re-wraps them for her._ _

_ _"I don't want to know how this happened," Granny informs her when the bandages first come off. _ _

_ _Emma's lips thin and she nods, eyes fixed on the floor._ _

_ _"But when you're ready," Granny continues, uncapping the tube Whale had handed Emma, "you really should tell me. I’ll listen, okay?" _ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Billy stops by long enough to pull Emma into their first hug and to drop off a box._ _

_ _"You owe me for this," he tells her when she opens it. _ _

_ _He doesn't mean it, but Emma finds herself thinking, _yes, yes I will_ as she looks over a new-ish revolver and the soft leather of its holster and matching belt. Putting the lid back on the box and its undisturbed contents is hard in ways Emma doesn't expect it to be, but the comforting weight on her hip isn't much good with fucked up hands and a fucked up head._ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Every few hours Granny's tablet chimes, queueing her to dig through the pockets of her old brown coat and produce one of the tiny nutritional bars - no bigger than a finger - that Dr. Whale had suggested for getting Emma's body used to regular meals again. Emma eats every bar she's handed, aware of sharp eyes watching her every moment._ _

_ _When the _Den_'s clock faces changes from a pale yellow background to a dark blue Granny sighs, taking off her glasses and rubbing at her eyes._ _

_ _"Are you tired?"_ _

_ _"Not really," Emma admits. _ _

_ _Granny reclines in her office chair and nods. "Whale said that's normal. Your body is still trying to figure out what way is up."_ _

_ _An awkward silence falls. Emma finds her self clinging to it fiercely - all too aware she won't like whatever is waiting on the other side of it. Everything has been leading them here no matter how she wishes it wasn't._ _

_ _"How long have I known you, Emma?"_ _

_ _Emma doesn't even need to think about the date engraved on her necklace, "Seven years."_ _

_ _"And have I ever, in all those years made you think that I thought you were disposable?"_ _

_ _She shakes her head._ _

_ _"Honey, I know that whatever it is that happened up until you crashed into my hanger wasn't pretty - but it breaks my damn heart to know that you still haven't figured out that there are people who love you." Granny takes off her glasses, sniffing as she does so. "I made a mistake asking you to help the way I did, I realize that in hindsight."_ _

_ _Emma tries to hide her flinch._ _

_ _"Not like that," Granny says holding out a stern finger. "I was so busy with all the chaos with Ruby that _Billy_ had to be the one to tell me something was up with you." She shakes her head, blinking away tears, "That first time I saw you, _really_ saw you I knew he was right. But by then..."_ _

_ _Emma clenches her fists and forces herself to endure the pinch of the bandages. "I wanted to help," she tries to explain._ _

_ _"And I wanted your help - still do - but more than that I wanted you to be _safe_." Granny smiles and gives a sad little shrug, "I had thought you knew that."_ _

_ _+_ _

_ _Every room on the port - with the exception of Granny's office - feels unusually cold. Granny must notice her discomfort because when they get ready to leave for the night she drapes her beat-up coat over Emma, smoothing invisible lines from the shoulders. The coat is heavy and warm in ways that only add to the ache in her bones._ _

_ _Granny smiles and pulls it closer around Emma, "Damned thing's as old as I am, but she'll keep you warm enough on a cold night."_ _

_ _There's a story there - one of the million stories Granny will never tell about herself or about the war. As long as Emma has known her, she has kept her secrets close. Even to the residents of the _Den_ her identity as the owner isn't widely known - the merchants and tenants pay their fees to a bank account and any communication with her goes through her army of middlemen and that's how Granny likes it. _ _

_ _They head towards the lift that leads to the residential and hotel level in a comfortable silence._ _

_ _"Whale said you didn't remember much after that fourth day."_ _

_ _"Not really, no." Emma remembers a lot of things about the last two weeks, but some of what's real and what isn't gets a little fuzzy when she thinks about them. _ _

_ _Granny allows the partial lie, waving the subject away with a _hum_ and a nod. "Well, the important thing is that you're here now and you're safe." After a moment of contemplation, she side-eyes Emma, "That pirate is here, too."_ _

_ _Emma almost stumbles over her own feet at that, "Hook's _here_?" She'd half expected that he had stuffed her in an escape pod and taken off the first chance he got._ _

_ _"Yup," Granny pops her _p_, her eyebrows rise almost to her hairline. "He's a slippery little shit, that one. Don't trust him as far as I can throw him."_ _

_ _"He…" Emma opens and closes her mouth, eventually settling on: "_What_?"_ _

_ _"That's pretty much what I said when he decided to stick around, but seein' as he practically saved your life by coming us when you passed out I told everyone to give him some space and let him do as he wanted. Well, I _might_ have also threatened to cut off some other body parts of his if he didn't behave himself." Granny stops abruptly and takes Emma's chin in hand as she meets her eyes, "You say the word though, and I'll _personally_ vent his ass into space."_ _

_ _"Um. I mean, I don't really have any objections either way?"_ _

_ _"Well, if you change your mind…" Granny offers, looking a bit put out not being given the go-ahead._ _

_ _"Was he…" Emma pulls a face, still feeling off-kilter. "People are normally upset when they're caught, and his capture and transport isn't really a highlight of my career."_ _

_ _"All I know is he's a squirrely one - told me he'd been taken prisoner fair and square by you and that it wouldn't be _good form_ of him to escape from his captor until she was better rested." Granny snorts loudly enough to startle the people walking around them, "Met a few guys like him back in my day. Shot most of them full of holes," she adds in what sounds like an afterthought._ _

_ _Tilting her head to the side Emma considers what part of that statement to focus on first. It's enough that she almost doesn't notice when they walk right by the hotel she normally beds down at. _ _

_ _She opens her mouth to say as much, but Granny cuts her off._ _

_ _"Shush. I've had an apartment ready for you for a while, and since you aged me another hundred years or so this last week and I'm not above using that it to ensure you say yes to it."_ _

_ _Emma knows a losing battle when she sees it._ _


	11. Chapter 11

The apartment is easily bigger than _Bug_ which isn't all that surprising, really.

"I'd offer to give you a tour, but I'm beat and you're smart enough to figure out what beds and couches do," Granny still makes a grand flourish with her hands, displaying the first room with feigned pomp. "The console inside should already be hooked up to your account - if not let me know and I'll have someone do whatever it is they do to get those damned things working."

She turns to leave, but stops, turning back and pinning Emma with a look that allows no room for bullshit. "Are you going to be okay tonight?"

Emma looks inside the doorway at the cheap dining room table set and a couch which is apparently _hers_. "Yeah," she decides. "If I need something, I'll wave you."

Granny narrows her eyes at Emma but eventually nods, seemingly satisfied to continue along her way. Emma watches her go for a while, Granny's coat still tucked around her, heavy and warm as ever. 

When she steps inside the eerie whir of the door locking behind her triggers an odd rush of emotions. She's alone, _really_ alone, and while part of her is grateful for a moment of privacy another part of her wants to rush down the hall after Granny. 

Around her, the starter furniture she has no need or use for seems to mock her and she finds she honestly can't remember the last time she sat on a sofa that wasn't Ruby's. The idea of having her very own set of table and chairs seems terribly wasteful. On the _Bug_ she normally ate standing up and in the _Den_ Emma always eats wherever Granny or Ru- She shakes that thought away before it takes hold and festers.

"Shower, then bed." She knows that if she has any chance of prying any new information about Ruby from Granny that she'll need to look the part of a sane and rational person, even if she doesn't feel it.

+

Emma's not sure if she's ever enjoyed a shower as much as the one she takes. Maybe it's because it's been over two weeks since her last one. It could also be that it's because she's hasn't splurged on a room that had decent water pressure in _years_. 

She's still not sold on the idea of being leashed to an apartment, but maybe there are aspects that make it not _so_ unfathomable. There are ever thick towels waiting for her inside the bathroom cabinet, a little dusty but still nicer than anything Emma usually uses.

There's even a chair tucked in the corner of the room next to a table that makes disinfecting and rebandaging her hand all the easier. She finds herself drawn to the bed when she's done, and frankly it's _excessively_ large after years on her cot. 

The fine coating of dust that seems clings to the whole apartment makes her wonder just how long Granny had been waiting to spring it on her. The 'verse is full of sparsely populated planets and moons, but in space every inch is coveted and precious. Real estate like this apartment wouldn't last an hour without an offer being made, and to let it just _sit_ there, _empty_… 

Emma pushes those thoughts aside, grabbing hold of the top layer of bedding and giving it two firm shakes and sending dust motes dancing into the air until she's sneezing. She shakes it off and drops her towel to the floor and before she can talk herself out of it and climbs into the bed, pulling the still dusty sheets up around her.

She doesn't sleep much that night, but there are times when she holds very, very still and tries very, very hard where she can pretend everything okay.

+

The sounds of clanking wakes her. She's up and out of bed, desperately missing her tiny arsenal on _Bug_ and the box she left with Granny as she searches for a suitable weapon. The lamp on her bedside table seems to be her best bet when compared to her other options of the bed, her dirty clothes, or her towel. The heft and sharp lines are brutal against her palm, but she has bigger problems.

Lamp in hand Emma forgoes modesty, slowly and cautiously pulling open the bedroom door to see-

"_Billy_?"

Billy spins, looking chagrined to be found in her kitchen holding a large stack of what appears to be some plates and a pan. At his feet a broken bowl lays in pieces. 

The knowledge of Emma's nudity strikes them both at the same time - Billy's eyes jumping to the ceiling over Emma's head as she does her best to turn her makeshift weapon into some form of cover.

"I'm going to-" she points to the bedroom and Billy nods, still studying the air vents above her.

"I'll- uh," he waves around him in a general area, "be here."

+

Emma's options on clothing narrow down to the towel (still damp) and her clothes from yesterday (damp from laying under a wet towel all night - _smart move, Emma_). With a grimace, she pulls on the jeans and slides into the shirt.

Billy's back is to her when she emerges, shoulders stiff as he fusses with a stack of plates on the counter. 

"I'm decent," she offers, knowing he'd keep stacking and unstacking those plates until he was sure he was allowed to look at her.

"Granny couldn't remember if she put any stuff in here. I thought I'd be in and out without waking you," he says by way of apology. The broken pieces of the bowl that had woken her get a sharp look from him.

Emma finally notices a large box that definitely wasn't sitting on her dining room table the night before. Inside it there is soap, conditioner, cleaning supplies, and various other items piled up. There's an envelope too, labeled _please stop losing these_ that Emma picks up. Sure enough, it contains an IdentiCard and credit chit. 

"Thanks," Emma offers Billy. "Next time though…"

Billy nods quickly. "Yeah, I promise to knock."

She keeps digging, and under what appears to be a bottle of Granny's whiskey-of-dubious-origins she pulls out three boxes of her favorite emergency rations. 

_Funny how many people seem to be stocking up on these_ a traitorous part of her mind points out. 

"If you don't like those-"

"No, they're fine," she assured him, already opening the box and pulling one out. She stops, pulling out a second with a questioning look towards Billy.

He nods, taking it from her with a half-hearted grin. "Do they ever bust your ass for eating these?"

Emma feels the tug of a real smile on her face, "All the time."

"_Eating that garbage when you have a perfectly good food court one floor up_," Billy mimes a surprisingly accurate Granny, including the pursed lips. He leans back against the cabinet, ripping open the bar open and taking a bite. "It's got everything you need, so why bother paying six times more for something else?"

"Ruby's the same way, she's always…" Emma trails off, unable to continue.

They exist in silence for a while, only the sounds of their wrappers filling the space between them. Finally, Billy clears his throat.

"There's no news yet," he tells her in a low voice. "And if there is I'm not supposed to tell you about it until Granny says you're better." 

The way he says _better_ makes Emma look up, self-consciously of what he thinks of her. There's no disdain in his face though, just weary lines around his eyes that make him look closer to forty than the twenty he is. 

"Just so you know," he says carefully, "what you did was stupid as hell, but I get it."

Emma looks away, making herself busy nibbling at the bar in her hand.

"If I was halfway across the 'verse and I got the call you got…" Billy shrugs. "I would've gotten my hands on the best ship I could and come home, no matter what it took. It's Ruby, you know?"

Billy and she have never been close, but they've always had an understanding. Emma finds herself watching him, looking through his words and finding no trace of a lie in them and coming up empty. She thinks that maybe this is as close as they should be allowed to get without Ruby standing between them. On that same line of thought, she wonders if he's as eager as she is to slip their leashes and _make_ a way to bring Ruby back.

"No," he says like he can hear her thoughts. "_That_," he says firmly, "is something Ruby wouldn't forgive."

Emma thinks she'd be okay with that, _if_ it meant Ruby was safe. 

"We do this the right way."

"And if we fail..?" She asks, well aware that the 'verse doesn't tend to factor good intentions into its endgames.

Billy's smile is sharp and bent in ways Emma can relate too.

+

Part of her is tempted to take the rest of her day to track down Hook, but she quickly gets distracted by the tablet Billy left behind. It's already signed in - under _his_ name - and completely unlocked which only confirms he meant for it to be left behind. A file labeled _Ruby_ is staring up at Emma like a challenge.

She quickly makes a copy of it, sending it to her own account and her private account - just incase - before grabbing her chit card. Granny is without a doubt suspicious enough of her already, and spending all day locked inside her apartment would only make that worse. An Emma who went out and bought some sorely needed clothes and got a bite to eat before turning in early for bed would be far less likely to be suspected.

Besides, Emma thinks getting a whiff of her shirt, she's starting to smell. 

+

Marco grabs her as soon as he sees her walk in, pulling her to him and speaks too quickly in an unfamiliar language. She can't understand what he's saying, but she gets the gist of it from the tremor of his voice and the way his eyes linger on her face and hands when he pulls back.

"It is good to see you," he tells her and Emma can't help but remember that somewhere out there he has a son who has yet to come home.

He fills in the conversation for the both of them - keeps it light as he talks of customers, a pickpocket he ran into, and his recent projects. When he pulls out two oranges, he doesn't hand her one like normal. Instead, he sits in his stool and peels it before breaking off slices to hand to her.

"Thanks," she says, hoping he understands all the things she's grateful for.

+

Her simple shopping trip ends up taking more out of Emma than she expects. Unlike spending all day sitting in Granny's office, and by the time she reaches the closest restaurant she all but falls into her chair. She could sleep here, she thinks as she closes her eyes in relief. She stretches her fingers out, hissing at the ache she can't quite shake that was only made worse by her foolish attempts earlier to power through and carry her bags like everyone else.

"You know," drawls an unfortunately familiar voice, "it's generally usually considered polite to get to know a man before you go drag him along on one of your adventures."

Emma sits up straight, more weary than surprised as she levels Hook with an unamused look. Because Hook is, well, _Hook_ he smiles and proceeds to join her at the table as if she invited him. 

He opens up his menu with a flick of his wrist before leaning in and whispering, "No time like the present to make up for it, ey?"

She doesn't trust him, but she also doesn't get the feeling he's planning to attack her so much as he's planning on her buying his lunch.

"I didn't kidnap you - I legally appropriated you so you could stand trial for your crimes," she points out. "And I'm not paying for your meal."

Hook winks bawdily at her, pulling a glass flask from one of his pockets. "No worries, got my meal right here, love."

Emma resists the urge to roll her eyes. "Look, I'm exhausted so how about you tell me why you're here and what you think you'll be getting out of this."

He leans closer, speaking so softly Emma finds herself leaning forwards in hopes of catching what he's saying. 

"Have you truly forgotten the bargain you made me already?" He stares over at her, the blue of his eyes is eclipsed by black of his pupils, the tip of his tongue resting against his upper lip with what looks suspiciously like barely contained glee. "I give you time for your little mission and you…"

Emma knows what she said. She sits back in her seat, folding her hands gingerly on top of the place setting as she considers this. "I was under obvious duress at the time-"

His smile fades into something that resembles curiosity, "And yet, you meant every word of it, didn't you?"

They hold each other's gaze, Emma keenly aware of the dull table knife under her hand as she is of the hook on his hand.

"You'll give me time?" She's said something wrong from the way his eyes narrow, but she can't bring herself to play his games the way he wants, let alone _care_.

He nods curtly, "All the time you need."

He isn't lying. 

"Then you have a deal."

Hook sits back in his chair, head cocked to the side. He's pleased with himself and not ashamed to flaunt it.

"Tell me, love. Will you fight me, when the time comes?"

Lately, Emma's whole body seems to ache and she'd given up on having a regular sleeping schedule long before she started playing with needles while Hook sang his crass little songs. Somewhere on the other side of the 'verse the closest thing she's ever had to a home is likely lost to her forever, and worse, she finds she really doesn't care. She cares about Ruby though, cares enough that maybe it'd be easy to find peace with everything as long as she knew Ruby was safe and sound.

"Of course," she says even though she can hear the lie in her own words. 

+

Hook follows her back to her place and if she lets him in without a fight it's only because the apartment feels more like a public place than a home at this point.

He immediately migrates to the dining table, peeking in the still full box shamelessly. He moves on to the kitchen, opening empty cabinets and eventually dragging one elegant finger along her countertops, frowning down at the dust it collects. He's either smart or disinterested enough that he doesn't try to enter her bedroom, content to stop his wandering after inspecting her bare living room walls.

He doesn't ask for an explanation on the state of her room and Emma doesn't feel the need to explain, so she doesn't. She's not used to having so many things, so many useless things to scatter across so much useless space. It'd made her angry in parts and careless in others. 

She ignores his presence, tosses her two bags of clothes onto the floor - avoiding the towel - and pulls Billy's tablet out of her nightstand. She turns it on with a flick of her fingers, toeing her boots off as she makes her way to the bed where she flops down. 

The icon _Ruby_ is right where she left it, and with a simple command it's spilling its secrets to her.

+

It turns out that there's a whole lot of nothing hiding Billy's files. In fact, there's so little information available that most of what's available is a list of people who _Den_y knowing anything. The rest boils down to a carefully censored version of Ruby's activities the day before she left. 

When Emma finally gets up to get a drink before attempting to sleep her apartment is empty of both strange pirates and the bottle of whiskey that she'd seen inside Billy's box. 

+

Hook becomes something like a shadow after that. 

"Not a shadow," he corrects her accusation with a cheeky wink, "think of me as your own personal reaper, love."

+

"Where do you go when you're not here?" Emma asks over a ration bar. She never bothers to offer him one and feels oddly justified in it.

"Tell you what," he offers, abandoning his tablet and turning to face her, "I'll tell you, but only when you _actually_ care about my answer."

Emma gives him an unimpressed look and doesn't care that she's confirming his suspicions as she turns her attention back to her bar. 

"Thought so," he says too loudly for it to be a private musing.

+

Billy and Hook have clearly met long before Hook strolls into Emma's apartment while she and Billy are trading notes. 

Billy raises an eyebrow but says nothing, looking deeply unimpressed at Hook's invasion of Emma's Place and far too wrapped up in his hunt for Ruby to care.

"Pirate," Billy greets.

"Mechanic," Hook responds with a mock bow before he retrieves a beer Emma doesn't remember putting in her fridge.

+

Whatever secrets Granny holds, Hook is apparently included in at least one of them. 

There's no _real_ aggression between the two, but there is a palpable distrust and knowledge of the other that Emma isn't given privy too. When Hook tags along to the meals Emma takes with Granny they spend more time than not throw out cryptic comments like knives towards each other, and more often than not they result in struck nerves and angry silences that Emma can't be bothered to actually deal with. It's easier to simply ask for the check and leave, knowing Granny will return to her work and Hook will be content to trail after Emma or with continuing to bare his teeth at Granny's back.

"We were just playing, love," he assures her, flopping down on what's become _his_ side of the couch.

"You really weren't," She corrects as she pulls out Billy's tablet and starts to sift through any new findings. "But luckily, I don't care."

+

"Are you sleeping?"

"I am."

Whale hums, ticking something off on his scanner. "Eating?"

Emma smiles, full of false cheer. "Two whole meals a day."

"My, my, my," Whale tells her with his own false grin. "Keep this up you'll _defiantly_ be in the running for the Most Improved Addict."

Emma's false smile sours and turns into something very dangerous and very real. She doesn't bother to hide it. For all Whale's snark and bravado he falters, coughing into his hand before motioning her towards the door.

"Well, that's all for now," he's trying to levity but he knows better than to meet her eyes. "Try not to snort any questionable powders, even if your friends say it will make you cool."

+

Billy and Emma meet up for drinks more often than not these days.

They don't talk. Emma prefers it that way and Billy seems to as well. He keeps her glass full and keeps his thoughts to himself - even if his eyes sometimes linger over the mostly healed marks at the bend of Emma's elbows. 

Sometimes they get lucky and a stranger to the _Den_ wanders into their favorite bar and gets too wasted to ignore the bubble of space that the wise and the regulars give them. 

"You're a mean lookin' fucker," the idiot of the week tells Billy with a smile. Emma can smell the booze on him, see it in his fumbling steps. He holds himself the way small men do when they think more of themselves than their bodies can offer.

Billy pauses mid-sip, his bottle hovering inches from his face as he considers. He turns to Emma, "Is that what I am?"

She shrugs, drawing an absent finger over the rim of her glass and looking pointedly towards the two men their idiot had wandered in with. It's his choice, after all, he bumped into Billy, not her. She's just as happy finishing her drink in peace as she is indulging in a little mind-clearing violence.

Their idiot notices, turning to leer at Emma, "So is this your litt-"

That's as far as he gets before Billy's mind is made up and his bottle comes crashes over the idiot's head. 

In the chaos, Emma manages to finish off her glass before she stands up and intercepts the two friends barreling towards Billy.

+

Hook is sprawled out on her couch when she gets back. If he's surprised by the state of her face or her knuckles he doesn't show it. Instead, he laughs and retrieves the first aid kit from the cupboard he's delegated it too. She's reminded not for the first time that the only reason Granny's box no longer sits on the table is that Hook had unpacked it.

"You know," he tells her as he examines a cut on her hand before swabbing it with disinfectant, "I've-"

"I don't care," Emma reminds him.

Hook shakes his head but keeps smiling like he knows something she doesn’t, keeps tending to her wounds.

+

Granny slams a lot of doors when she catches sight of Billy and Emma but says nothing.

Part of Emma wants her to say something.

+

She's turned all of their current information on Ruby over in every which way at least a dozen times, but still… _nothing_. Emma throws her tablet to the table, running an anxious hand through her hair before she spies the pirate on her couch. When he wandered in, she isn't sure.

"Have you heard from your crew?"

Hook stops drinking, turning a confused look on her, "My crew?"

"You know," Emma makes an abstract gesture, "the angry guys in the shuttles when I took your ship?"

Hook laughs, dark and ugly, "Darling, I'm not sure what stories of camaraderie you've heard, but a pirate's loyalty lasts only as long as the benefits do." He drinks deeply from his flask and shakes his head, "Considering how my ship and myself were so easily stolen away I have no doubt that they have all long since found new adventures to be had."

Emma considers him, "It's not just pirates, you know."

Hook stops drinking long enough to hold up his flask in a mock toast to her. "Here, here." 

It says something about the frequency of their time together that she recognizes exactly which flask he's drinking from simply by its lid.

+

Emma feels trapped inside the apartment. There's nothing of her here and far too much empty space making her feel smothered and guilty in turn. More than ever she can't shake the feeling that she needs to not be _here_. 

Unfortunately, her travel options are limited by reality and an almost empty credit chit. Allowing her bounty to crash on her couch until she's ready for their showdown and obsessively combing through data isn't exactly conducive to a healthy bank account.

Her front door opens, and almost as if summoned from her need for escape she finds Hook sauntering in. The only thing missing is the giant neon sign over his head that proclaims him the perfect way to avoid reality. 

She doesn't realize he's been talking until he stops, cocking his head to the side and studying her with a wary eye.

"You have a ship," Emma blurts out.

"Aye," he nods with narrowed eyes, "that I do."

"Is she in working order?"

Hook scoffs, looking almost insulted by the question.

"Great," Emma's light-headed with the relief, "because I need you and I need your ship."

"You need me, do you?" He's leaning forward now, kohl-lined eyes smirking down at her. 

"In the sense that if you say no I'll have no choice but to steal your ship out from under you, _again._" She smiles up at him in a way that makes him shutter his eyes away from her. She has the strangest idea that if she asked him nicely enough that he'd do just about anything. It's a strange notion, but more importantly, it's a powerful asset that she's not above exploiting when it comes to a man waiting for the day he can kill her. 

"So, how about it?"

Hook smiles and dips down in a mock bow. "We'll be ready to set sail at your word."

+

She doesn't have to tell Billy anything, he simply looks up when she walks in his office and frowns. 

"When?"

Emma shrugs, "As soon as possible."

Billy nods, absently arranging the things on his desk. "Hook's ship?"

"He offered."

"Of course he did," he says sounding older than his years. "Be careful with him, Emma."

"I'm always careful." 

"Still, I'll feel a lot better knowing you two aren't alone on that ship."

Emma cocks her head to the side, squinting at him like she's looking into the sun.

"That Corvette of his is built for a huge crew, having three people would be more ideal than a crew of two." Billy gives her a hard look, "I'm sure it wouldn't hurt that my presence would make Granny feel a lot better about letting you go back out there."

"I guess I should welcome you aboard, then," Emma says, torn between feeling grateful and betrayed.

+

Emma is considering two heavy jackets when Granny all but materializes out of thin air.

"I'd go with the red leather," she says disinterestedly.

"I'm going with or without your permission," Emma says preemptively as she puts the black jacket back, throwing the red one in her bag along with the triple thick socks and ration bars she'd grabbed earlier. "And I know for a fact Billy isn't joining up out of pure selflessness, so let's not pretend I'm the only one going stir crazy waiting for a sign that Ruby's okay."

Granny says nothing, simply falls in step with her as Emma wanders aimlessly through the store.

"Where will you go?"

Emma stops, turning to face her. "You know where I'm going for answers."

Granny nods and looks away, "_Ah._"

"It was the closest thing to a clue we've gotten - even if the guy who gave it to us has all but admitted he lied."

"Santo is a dangerous place," Granny says, but it sounds a lot like _be careful._


	12. Chapter 12

Emma claims the cabin she'd found the disassembled laser canon in, Billy the room between hers and Hook. As they load up the supplies Emma avoids carrying anything that involves her traveling down the hallways that lead towards the med bay. She doesn't fail to notice the way the others watch her, the way they grab at the boxes marked 'medical' before any of the others.

There's no itch under her skin, no urge for a repeat performance, only shame but the idea of sharing that with anyone seems more traumatic than helpful.

Once their bags are stowed Hook drags them from room to room, showing off the engine and ship with a wide smile and more than a little pride in his voice.

"Not another ship like her in the entire 'verse," he says patting the bulkhead. 

"Actually, there's something like a dozen of them," Billy corrects Hook with an unimpressed look.

Emma puts a preemptive hand on Hook's chest to keep him where he is, "Down boy."

Hook obeys, only leaning a fraction into her touch. On Emma's other side Billy has a look in his eyes that means trouble.

"Are you here to fight or are you here for _Ruby_?" she questions Billy with a pointed look. "Because anyone who isn't here to help me get Ruby back is welcome to get off this ship right the fuck now."

+

Killian is glaring at the selection of ration bars she'd had Billy drop off in the galley when Emma finds him next.

"I had previously thought that your apartment was stocked with these due to the scarcity of your time actually spent there," he turns a bar over with obvious disdain. "However, I'm starting to suspect you actually eat these things."

"Thirty bars for thirty credits - not to mention they last for _years_ and are easy to eat on the fly." Emma knows her argument by heart, even if her heart isn't into it without Ruby there to argue it. 

Killian looks at her like she's said something scandalous, "We may live in ships, love, but that doesn't mean we can't partake in a good meal." 

Emma rolls her eyes and pulls open a drawer, rooting around for a moment before she grabs and tosses a green bar at him. 

"They're not all bad," she assures him as she walks away. "I save the green ones for special occasions." 

Behind her, she can hear the tell-tale crinkle of the emergency ration bar being unwrapped and a sniff. After a moment there's a familiar racket of coughing and gagging that comes from the uninitiated tasting what Ruby referred to as 'Green Death'.

"Believe it or not those are sixty bars for thirty creds," She calls over her shoulder. 

+

Under Hook' tutelage Billy learns and Emma rediscovers the ship's systems.

"The first thing you should know about any pirate ship worth its salt is that it, like the crew, run on misdirection and secrets." Hook ignores Billy's eye and focuses solely on Emma, "The reason you had so much trouble with the _Jolly Roger_ is that you spoke to her in a language she doesn't speak."

"So what language _does_ she speak?"

"_Lies,_" Hook smiles, his hand flying over the environmental controls. Emma watches in confusion as he slides the temperature to well below freezing - there's a cheery chime and then the familiar sounds of the Jolly Roger's engines starting up but no noticeable change in the temperature. "And _just_ a smattering of distrust thrown in to make things fun," he purrs with a fond pat on the console.

Emma can all but feel Billy bristling behind her, but she ignores him and focuses on the control panel. Someone had clearly cleaned it up since Emma had piloted it home, the only sign she'd even been here the occasional brown flake of dried blood hidden under the keys.

"I-"

"So," Emma cuts off Hook's uncertain tone with a voice that allows no compromise, "how long will it take to get us fluent enough to start switching off shifts?"

Hook stays silent for a pause, when his voice comes it's hoarse. "Not long," he assures her. "You and the lad seem to be quick learners."

She nods, turning to leave before she does something stupid like looking at the mostly healed lines on the pads of her fingers. Billy says nothing as he falls in line behind her.

+

"Explain it to me," Billy asks her on the walk back to Emma's apartment. 

"What?"

"Anything," he demands. "Help me understand why you seem to trust a guy like that and why you let him follow you around like a stray. Why he all but gave you free rein of his ship." 

There's an accusation buried in his voice, one that hurts in more than one way. It scrapes open Emma's skin and leaves her feeling raw.

"Honestly," she says, "I have no idea why he does half the things he does. I suspect a lot of it has to do with how much rum he drinks but the rest is probably because we made a deal."

"A deal," Billy echoes. "What kind of-"

"_I_ set the terms, not him." Emma growls, "And I promise it's not whatever shit you're thinking of right now."

Billy searches her face, looking scared at what he might find. "He helped you back there on the ship - I know that much out. But it wasn't out of the kindness of his heart. I know men like him- they never do anything for nothing. What are you giving him?"

"Nothing I'm unwilling to offer."

"That's what I was afraid of," he says with a careful look.

+

They depart with little to no fanfare the next morning. Granny and Marco see them off, watching them all board with tight eyes and smiles.

"We'll bring her home," Emma doesn't bother adding any _or_'s.

"Bring yourself home too," Granny insists. 

\+ 

Emma hasn't been to Santo in a long time. She could have stood to be away from it for a lot longer.

"Fuck this place," Billy mutters as their shuttle touches down.

"Aye," Hook agrees, casting the planet in question a distasteful look.

+

They split up, but somehow that lasts for all of an hour before Billy and Hook are flanking her as she pushes her way into her third bar.

It's an odd feeling having two people at her back when the hard eyes of the inhabitants of the bar find her. 

For now, she's not alone. And if it means searching the 'verse one place at a time Emma is going to make sure Ruby won't be alone either.

+

"I don't understand you," she knows without looking that it's him that's entered the bridge. Billy is too practical to not be working or sleeping when it's her turn at the helms. Hook, though, Hook is never practical in ways Emma understands and is prone showing up at odd hours.

"What's to understand," Hook rumbles from behind her.

The consoles are incredibly well behaved ever since Emma learned how to communicate with them. Even more so since they pulled the _Jolly Roger_ into a fixed orbit around Santos. 

It's a little boring if she's being honest. 

"Have you ever been to Ariel?" Hook asks in the absent tone he uses when he doesn't expect her to actually participate in the conversations he often holds all on his own. "Beautiful planet."

Emma closes her eyes, sighing and unclenching her hands. "For the record - I still think you're affected by some weird sort of capture-bonding."

"Is it truly so hard to think that a man might be moved by the dedication he's seen in a woman willing to risk everything to rescue her friend?"

"A man, maybe. Not a pirate."

"Ah," he says softly. 

There's a pain in his voice, something Emma knows she caused but can't understand _how_.

+

They return to Santo in the morning and despite any injury her words might have caused Hook is still at her back. 

When guns are drawn when they enter their second location of the day Emma has only a fraction of a moment to contemplate how she's never seen Hook wear a holster before things are going to hell. She draws, concentrating her attention on the men and women with the scatterguns as she dives for cover behind the bar. Hook and Billy join her there and she's still contemplating enemy numbers and offering up her back up gun to Hook when she notices what looks like a Chaplain pistol in his hand. 

Hook catches her look and gives her a cocky smile, "Do you really think I'd follow you into this hell without arms of my own, lass?"

Emma finds herself smiling as the wood behind them splinters and shatters. She writes it off as adrenaline. 

+

They walk out of the bar with no information. The men and women who opened fire on them won't be walking away and Emma can't find any pity for them inside herself.

"You're cut," Billy says, sliding up to Emma and examining her bicep. 

"Yeah," she agrees, looking at the thin line that Hook's namesake had left on her when he'd narrowly pulled her to safety when they'd been flanked. She risks a glance, only to find Hook's eyes are also glued to her skin. 

"Don't worry," she says meeting his eyes over Billy's shoulder. "I'll live."

+

Hook keeps a careful distance from her when they return to the ship. The space over her left shoulder that she's grown accustomed to him filling is noticeably vacant. For once, it's her that crashes his shift at the helm.

"I'll stay alive," she assures him. "I won't back out of our deal."

Hook's laugh is unpleasant and leaves her feeling like she's missing whatever cruel punchline he's found.

"Our _deal_," he says roughly. "Why _are_ you so eager to die, Swan?"

"I'm not."

"_Right,_" He brings his hook up to his face, touching it to his upper lip before letting it fall to his side. "Maybe I'm just reading you all wrong."

"You are," she insists. "Most people do, don't feel bad."

He gives her an unimpressed look, turning back to the console. 

Emma's halfway back to her room by the time she realizes that she can't remember any other time she'd seen him turn away from her.

+

Billy comes to her room just before his shift, tablet in hand and a fierce look in his eyes.

They aren't a team. What they are - Billy points out to her - is two motivated people and a pirate who can be honed and unleashed easily enough. 

"From all accounts, this is largely a _pirate_ bar," Billy reminds her. "We've gotten lucky a few times but we can't expect to shoot our way in here and they're sure as _hell_ not letting a bounty hunter into Pan's domain without a fight. But…" he shrugs, "if anyone has info - it's these guys."

Emma glances down at the photo of the familiar-looking young man with a cruel smile. She'd given up on chasing him a long time ago - a few skipped meals have always outweighed the idea of coming face to face with him again. Emma scans over the intel Granny had sent over, Peter's face alongside a list of crimes that seems as long as the _Jolly Roger_ herself.

"I should probably mention that I kinda have a past with him," Emma rubs absently at her wrists. "Of the 'he'd probably kill me on sight' variety."

"You know," Billy says cautiously. "If you _asked_, he would do it."

She understands now why they're doing this here in her room and not on the bridge with Hook. Right and wrong have always been a nebulous thing in the past, but Emma thinks she knows exactly where this idea falls.

"Yeah," she agrees, wondering if she's _there_ \- if she's become _that_ spacer who's been riding alone long enough that it all has just fucked with her head a little too much and made her as cold as the 'verse. "I'll talk to him."

+

"You think you've found Pan?" Hook asks with a strange glint in his eyes.

Emma frowns, "You know him, too?"

He ignores her question, his eyes narrow on her, "You _know_ him?"

"We've met," she tries to shrug it off but she knows everyone on the bridge can hear the _he let me live_ she omitted.

Understanding mixes with something dark on Hook's face. He takes a slow step closer to her making Billy stand up straighter. Emma stays where she is, refusing to react. 

"_You've met_" He echoes in a whisper. His lips turn into a snarl but doesn't move any closer, content enough to pin her with his eyes. "There's a reason you've chosen to inform me of this, isn't there, love?"

It's an accusation, one Emma thinks she probably deserves for what she's about to ask.

+

Hook agrees, and in between that moment and the next, the man she knows recedes and leaves behind a creature made of hard eyes who holds his body like a weapon. For a startling moment, Emma thinks she could be afraid of the man she sees.

Emma never understood the fuss people had made over Hook in the reports she'd dug up during her hunt and in their recognition when he had followed her around the _Den_. She looks at him now and begins to understand that for whatever reason, she'd spent time more time in Killian Jones' company than Hook's.

"So, that's _Hook_," Billy muses her as they watch him getting ready to depart. 

"Yeah," Emma agrees, something terrible and cold caught in her chest. She thinks of Jefferson's stories about made monsters who used to be people. She wonders what ugly title there is for the people in his stories who have turn men-that-were-once-monsters into monsters-that-were-once-men. 

Then again, it probably depends on whose point of view the stories are told from and if enough lost girls were rescued as a result of the trespasses.

+

Hook takes a shuttle down and Emma paces in her cabin until she can't take the enclosed space anymore. 

The great thing about the _Jolly Roger_ is that it's newer and bigger than some ports Emma's visited. The Alliance originally designed Victoria-class Corvette's like this to carry whole armies under the radar of the Independents - and it shows in the stretching corridors and entire sections of the ship sitting in various states of disuse. Emma weaves absently through the corridors until she finds a section of rooms she's never seen. She stretches, hands made busy tying her hair up in a knot and out of her eyes. 

The ship is mostly silent when she starts to run, the only sounds Emma hears the thumping of her heart, the heavy sounds of her breath, and the slap of her feet on the floor. She runs through sections she's never seen, back into familiar grounds, and back into the unknown. When fatigue starts to creep up on her she runs like the Alliance itself is on her tail.

+

She's doubled over and trying to find a rhythm in her breathing and thoughts when Billy shows up and puts his attention on the nearby rooms and not her. Billy understands running, understands the chase as much as the crash.

"News?" Emma grunts, pushing hair that has long ago fallen from its bun and into her face.

"Shuttle nine is returning," he says evenly. "Hook isn't talking to me, but he said he'd meet you in the shuttle bay."

Emma nods, pushing herself up using the wall for support and pointedly doesn't wonder what their conversation _actually_ sounded like.

+

"He knows nothing about your lass," Hook reports brusquely, wiping half-heartedly at his face with the side of his prosthetic brace. His good hand has been wrapped firmly around his flask since he exited the shuttle. 

"Oh," Emma doesn't know how to feel about that. This was supposed to be _it_, the moment where their paths were opened up and made clear.

Hook motions with his flask so that a single finger can point at her. "He did know other things, though. Knew that you and yours have been nosing about his territory and didn't seem too pleased about it." He licks his lips, a cruel smile tugging at them, "He went on for a while about some message he wanted to give you."

The hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she folds her hands under her arms before they can stray to her holster or necklaces, "Did he?"

Hook rocks forward on the balls of his feet excitedly, "Funny thing that, poor lad had trouble enunciating his message when he tried to relay it to me. Couldn't make heads or tails of it. So," he shrugs, arms held out as if to say _what can be done?_

Emma watches him, taking in the smears of red at his temple and the patches of hair on his scalp that are slicker and darker than the rest. She sighs and moves to collect a water bag and rag from the cabinets, motioning him forward when both are found. 

"Sit," She orders as she tears the bag open with her teeth, pouring a splash of water onto the rag before setting it back on the counter. Hook takes a seat at the counter, his too hard eyes watching Emma as she moves the cloth carefully over his face and neck before starting her investigation of his scalp. In her hands the wet spot on the rag slowly turns red. 

She grabs his prosthetic brace, carefully moving it until it's where she wants it. When she lets go he stays where she put him and allows her to push back the sleeves of his jacket and to roll back his shirt sleeves until his skin is showing. She uses the cloth to wipe the whole bit down, tracing over the leather and metal seams with the cloth. If the rag was red before, it's a sticky scarlet now. 

Emma switches out the rag with another, dampening it before repeating the process. "You hurt?"

"No," he assures her, tipping his flask back to kill whatever remains inside. "Your weapon is whole - well, as whole as it can be," Hook looks pointedly towards his hook, still spotted with traces of mostly dried blood. 

Her lips thin as she examines the hook. She knows from experience it's sharper than it looks. She takes the base of his brace in one hand, carefully running the rag over the hook and wiping it as clean as can be made in a hangar bay with a damp rag. 

"That foolish little man seemed to think it would be him who killed you," Hook continues in a dangerous tone. 

When Emma glances up she finds him fixated on his own hook. 

"I'm sure you corrected him," Emma wonders briefly about what normal people talk about. She doubts normal people have friends go missing in slaver territory or get reminded on a semi-regularly basis about how they traded their lives away for favors from pirates.

"I do wonder," Hook muses, interrupting her thoughts, "who will be so kind as to clean your blood from my hook when your friend is found?"

"Whoever it is, I won't know about it," she says with a shrug, aware her answer is a disappointment to him. "I'll be dead."

+

Night finds Billy taking his shift at the helm and Emma on edge. The information - or, lack thereof - that she's pouring over has gradually been turning to meaningless words and it's easier than it should be to throw her tablet aside and tug on her boots.

It's easier still to pretend she doesn't know where she's going until she's knocking on Hook's door. He doesn't seem surprised to see her, simply waves her inside silently and offers her half an empty bottle as she passes him. Emma takes it before she can talk herself out of it. He's out of his coat and waistcoat, looking like a whole new breed of man in a loose shirt and leather pants.

"I would ask what brings you here," Hook drawls in a rough voice, an insincere smile on his face, "but I'm going to assume it's because you have need of me. What is it this time?"

Emma stays silent, watching as Hook sways lightly on his feet. She's never seen him truly unsteady, no matter how much he'd had to drink. 

"Do you have any more?" She asks, lifting the bottle in her hand.

Hook frowns, looking around the room and then plucking a bottle from inside his bed stand. He holds it up to her like it's a trophy and Emma carefully pries it from his grip.

"Any more in your cabin?"

Hook tilts his head, looking amused. "_Doubtful_."

She makes quick work of the second bottle's cap and moves over to the tiny bathroom sink, dumping both bottles down the drain despite the outraged _Hey!_ Hook barks at her.

"You've had enough," she promises. 

Hook looks for a moment like he wants to challenge that, but he stops and rubs his hand over his face. "Pray tell what need it is you have of me that requires you to cancel my plans for the night?"

Emma shakes the bottles out before setting them aside. "Maybe I don't need anything from you."

Hook laughs, "If you're here - you _must_." He taps his hook against his chin in mock contemplation, sizing her up as he does.

"Maybe I'm here to make sure you don't drink yourself to death," Emma snaps with more irritation than she was aware she was carrying.

"Ah, guilty conscience, love?" He takes a mostly steady step towards her. "Don't fret, I've done far worse for _far_ less." There's malice in his voice, but it's the self-loathing brought to the front by too much run that makes Emma want to flinch.

"I don't understand you," she finds herself telling him again. 

"What is there to understand? I'm the man who does the dirty work," he explains, surprisingly deft fingers darting out to capture a lock of her hair that had been resting on her shoulders. "I'm the man who takes the falls and damns his soul as needed. I always have been and I imagine I always will." He rubs his fingers together, musing the lock while the overpowering scent of rum washes over her on his exhale.

Emma stays still, waiting for the rest of his diatribe. Whatever it is coming - she knows she deserves it.

"You're not the first person to use me, you know," he whispers, surprising her with the fragility of his voice. "I've known many people who preferred to keep their hands clean."

"My hands aren't clean," she protests.

"When compared to mine several hours ago they certainly were," Jones smiles. "I must admit, I'm rather honored to be used by you, pet."

She takes a steadying breath and tries to meet his eyes, but ducks her own away at the last second.

"I'm sorry," Emma says, unsure of whose trespasses she's apologizing for.

Jones leans forward, fingers abandoning her hair and falling to his side. His body sags forward until his back is bent and his forehead is resting on her shoulder. Tentatively Emma brings her hands up, folding them around him in her best mimicry of Granny's embrace.

She pauses, one hand moving to cup the back of his head in what feels like the right move to make, "I sent you in there because I was afraid I'd die if I crossed Pan again - and I can't die. Not yet, at least. I've got work to do." 

There's a poem she only half remembers, one she wishes she could repeat now. Jones is practically poetry himself and she thinks he'd understand all about the darkest day of the year, the promises that had to be kept, and how a journey must be completed before a soul could be granted sleep.

One of his arms reaches up and tentatively wraps itself around her waist. His fingers splay over her back. 

They stand in silence, Jones swaying gently from time to time as he clings to her. For a brief moment Emma thinks she might understand something new about him. The thought skitters away too quickly though, and she's left with a lot of uncertainty and an armful of drunken pirate.

Half manically the chorus of _what do you do with a drunken sailor_ flitters through her head leaving only terrible truths as answers. 

What Emma does with a drunken pirate is slowly shuffle them back until her calves connect with his bunk.

"_Shh_," she attempts to soothe as he blinks weakly up at her in protest to the movement. "You need rest and I'm not strong enough enough to hold you up all night if you fall asleep on me."

It's easy enough to push him down in his bed, but it's hard to disconnect them with his hand clinging to the back of her shirt.

"Stay," he tilts his face up at her, one of his practiced smiles already falling into place. In another time and place it would have been enough for her. "If you permit me, I could be of much _more_ use to you." 

"As flattering as that is," and it's not at all - it only cuts and burns at places that Emma had thought were reserved for other people, "I just want to sleep." She considers her options, considers the man in front of her, "Would you mind if I slept here?"

Jones scoots himself to the side, the gratitude in his eyes slicing even deeper into her. Emma wants to yell at him - maybe cry _for_ him or something equally fruitless - but it's late and Ruby's still lost, so she tries to smile back as she makes a place for herself in his rumpled bed. He gives her the illusion of privacy as she gets comfortable, rolling up his sleeve and fussing with his hook. Emma turns on her side, giving him her back and stays silent as a metallic _click_ and grind come from his side of the bed. 

"Lights, off." He commands, and the room obediently falls to darkness. 

There's fumbling, the sounds of leather moving, the click of something heavy being placed on the shelf above the bed, and finally a soft sigh. She lays there and listens to his breathing slowing and changing, only closing her eyes when she's sure he's asleep.

+

When she rouses from her light sleep Jones has snuck into her side of the bed. His body is still well on his side but his hand has at some point wrapped around her wrist. It's not a strong hold, nothing suffocating, but a loose clasp like he was worried she'd leave and he wouldn't notice.

She waits until she's sure he's asleep and then creeps away quietly as she can. Even in his sleep he's moved to reach after her, and that only solidifies her resolve. 

On the shelf above him his brace and hook are laying on display like pieces of abandoned armor.

+

Word comes in from one of Billy's sources - Emma uses that word liberally after seeing the state of Billy’s hands - on Santos about a well to do Sheriff on the far side of Santos who likes young women and aged wine. He's not so picky about how he acquires either.

"He likes blondes," Billy says in the same voice he uses when there's a gun in his hand. 

"Well," she says slowly, "lucky us?"

Billy doesn't question her, but he watches her with one hand ghosting over his holster. At his side Jones has crossed his arms and stares daggers into the floor. Neither of them is stupid enough to fight her on this.

+

It's Hook and his appraising eyes and cold anger and not Jones, who drops Emma off on the outskirts of town. It's Hook who passes over the tiny kit that Billy had prepared for her.

She's still Emma in name, but when she steps out of the shuttle she becomes someone else. A woman who laughs easily and turns down drinks because she's watching her figure, a woman who wears eye-catching clothes and impractical shoes.

"Wait," Hook stops her when she turns to go. He places a light pressure with his hook under her chin and she allows him to raise her head. 

"This lass is happy," he reminds her, "she doesn't have a problem showing it."

Emma nods, burying the hurt for another day. Learning how to pass yourself off as someone else is mostly hyper-vigilance - the rest is painful self-examinations and knowledge of what the other party wants. She's not all that surprised at how well Hook understands this.


	13. Chapter 13

She reminds herself that this assignment could be worse but at the end of each day that her mark hasn't surfaced, hasn't taken the bait, the ache in her face and in the arch of her feet from forcing them into unfamiliar shapes is wearing her down. It's different, more exhausting than the aches that come from running or fighting for her life.

Emma pulls out yet another a tiny needle from the kit stashed under the loose floorboard in her hotel room, tapping it twice before pulling up her skirt and sticking it into her thigh as a precaution.

+

On the third day she smiles across the bar at Keith and lets him buy her a drink. She fusses with her purse when the bartender hands off the drinks to him and gives him plenty of time to add a drop of his special concoction into hers. 

"Cheers," Keith toasts her.

Emma bites her tongue till it bleeds, and feigns shy pleasure at his words. The whiskey in her glass is top shelf and the burn that trails down her throat is nothing compared to what lies under her skin. She waits until her drink is mostly gone before letting her smile get a little looser, her blinks a little longer.

"You feelin' alright?" He asks her with a disgustingly smug smile.

"Just a little tired," she says playing along with what he expects. 

"You know, I have a place just around the corner…"

+

For all his money and his title as Sheriff, Keith really isn't all that impressive when his sleepy date pulls a gun on him and ties him to his own bed. She doesn't even have to get creative with her threats before he's spilling his secrets and offering up various stashes of wealth he has hidden. Sadly he has no answers for the questions Emma poses.

She wasn't aware he was connected to the small mining operations on Santos - but she isn't surprised by the explosives he leads her too. After all, slavery and hazardous work conditions go hand in hand.

She distributes the various currencies and jewels he'd lead her too to the various haggard-looking people she finds in his house along with a warning to gather what they want and leave within the hour. They all move quickly and don't ask questions.

+

The next time Hook sees Emma she's still not herself and she's not the woman who smiles. She's _her_, the woman who Emma becomes when she has shiny red lips and bodies at her feet. She offers him a smile that feels more dangerous than the weapon she normally keeps at her side when he opens shuttle doors and waves her inside. She leans in as she passes him, close enough he can catch a tangy hint of the dinitrotoluene and ammonia that's still clinging to her skin. His eyes are glued to his mouth, not so much oblivious as he is uncaring of the danger she's capable of. Emma is angry enough at her wasted week and the 'verse in general that she can't help herself when she takes a step closer to him.

"Want a kiss?" she purrs. She knows he does, but she's curious to know if he's only interested if she really meant it and not because Ruby is currently doing an impression of Schrödinger's wolf cub while Emma is looking for punishment. 

Hook gives her a snort and a little smirk, equally cruel, and leaves her standing alone in the bay.

+

On the _Jolly Roger_ she peels off her shoes first, taking time to rub at her arches in apology. The dress and jewelry follow, dropped carelessly to the floor before she fishes out her sidearm and stows it in her bedside table. 

She turns the shower on as hot as it can go and stands under it scrubbing at her skin until all traces of expensive perfume and makeup are gone and her skin is red and stinging. She stays under the water until the stinging fades away and the water monitor starts to flash. She can't justify using anymore unless she wants whoever is at the helm alerted to unusual water usage in her quarters. They wouldn't care, probably wouldn't even mention it considering the size of this ship's tanks, but Emma treads on the the side of caution.

+

Emma's still working herself up to leaving her room when the proximity alarms start blaring, effectively taking the choice out of her hands.

She's up and running towards the bridge when there's a terrible tremble in the ship and then there's silence. 

No lights, not engine sounds, _nothing._

After a moment there's soft static humming and the emergency lights flicker on along the hallway. At the same time, there's a vague sensation of being dragged up and out before Emma realizes her hair is no longer resting against her back. She throws out an arm to the wall of the corridor and one to the ceiling and braces herself as much as she can as she waits for the residual effects of the no longer functioning gravity plating to wear off. 

"_Emma,_" Billy screams from somewhere ahead of her. "We got trouble!"

+

"EMP," Jones hisses, his coat swirling up and away from him in a truly interesting fashion as he braces himself in a mostly stationary hover by the navigational console.

"You _think_," Billy snaps from where he sits strapped into the pilot's chair.

"Any idea _who_ did this?" Emma says before they can get into it.

"Not really. Best guess is the merchant class ship that passed us a while back," Billy frowns down at the still dead display before continuing to putter with the exposed wires. "It's the only ship I've seen in hours."

"Did you remember anything else about that ship?" She coaxes, trying not to sound as anxious as she feels. They've been tearing a bloody path across Santos a since they arrived and making more than a few enemies in the process. It doesn't really help narrow anything down considering that they're on a stolen Alliance flagship that's attached to a known pirate.

"Flashy," Billy bites at his lip, shaking his head. "Chesh-something. I think it was a Knorr but I didn't get-"

"A _Knorr?_" 

All eyes are on Emma.

"Probably," Billy says slowly, "with some really tacky customizations on it's-"

"Can you open a com to him?" She interrupts, rubbing absently at her temples.

"_Him_?" Billy drawls with a curious expression.

"I could be wrong," Emma hazards, "but I'm hoping the ship you saw was the _Cheshire_."

+

Jefferson says nothing, alternating between staring at Emma and staring at the space behind her once the coms are up.

"Jefferson," she pleads with him for the nth time. "_Why_ are you doing this?"

"Because," he spats out flipping quickly from placidity to rage. 

Behind her, Emma can sense Billy and Jones' discomfort at Jefferson's change in demeanor. She ignores them, keeping her attention fixed on Jefferson.

"_Why_," she presses hoping to find the logic in this. To her knowledge, they'd parted ways on good terms when Jefferson had left for his self imposed mission.

"Because you're _dead_," he hisses. "The 'verse swallowed you up and picked its teeth with your silly little ship." There's nothing close to sanity in his eyes when he looks at her.

"My ship," Emma echoes cautiously. "_Bug_."

Jefferson twitches on screen, his jaw clenching as he avoids her eyes. "Scrap metal, like it's owner."

_Oh,_ she thinks. "You found _Bug_, didn't you?"

"I failed her," he murmurs in a sing-song voice, "but I can make them _pay_."

"You didn't fail me-“ 

Jefferson's fists slam down on the console in front of him in a fit of rage, the skin on his left hand cracking open from the force of impact against _Cheshire_'s dials.

Emma swallows heavily and takes a small step forward towards the screen. "Why do you think you failed me?"

"She couldn't reach me but I knew she was in trouble," Jefferson says with a faraway look in his eyes. "I turned around as soon as the dreams started, but it was too late."

"Jefferso-"

"A man in a red hat was trying to sell yo- _her_ ship," Jefferson reaches up, tugging frantically at his hair and closing his eyes. "He said she got what was coming to her taking on the pirate the way she did." He shakes his head, and angry laugh spilling from his lips. "Silly little man was as red as his hat under his skin."

She doesn't know what to say to that, so she closes her eyes. "Jefferson," she says softly, "who am I?"

He glances at her, then back to the space behind her, "You're the warmth on charred wood that lingers after the fire dies." He smiles but this time his eyes are wet and sad. "You're like my stories - she didn't believe in them and I don't believe in you."

"Board this ship," Emma urges him, sending a sharp look towards Billy and Hook as they start to make noises of protest. "You always told me you could read me, right?"

Jefferson looks exhausted, "She never believed me."

"But you believe it, right?" Emma smiles, "Come over here and have a listen."

"I'm still going to kill the pirate." He informs her, "but … if it helps you rest, I'll humor you, Ghost."

The screen goes black as the transmission ends, leaving Emma at the center of two men's attention.

"Am I correct in assuming your friend disemboweled Mr. Smee?" Jones asks slowly.

Emma shrugs, "Probably. Look-"

"No need," he says with a mirthless smile. "If he doesn't kill us all we should get along _famously_. After all, I've been meaning to see to Smee ever since he started selling information on me and mine."

Emma doesn't know how to react to that so she doesn't. She turns to Billy, "Any comments from you?"

Billy shrugs, "I'm just starting to understand why you don't talk about your friend very much."

"He's sick," Emma grits out. "It's not his fault-"

"He's also docking," he says cutting her off. "So how about we worry about defining your EMP cannon toting, mentally unhinged friend later."

+

Jefferson is wearing his hat but no scarf, his shirt unbuttoned so the waxy ring around his neck stands out when Emma peeks through the docking tube. It's his own version of war paint and it breaks something inside Emma to know he's had to resort to this to board the _Jolly Roger_.

He's armed, a high-end laser pistol in hand, so when the doors open between them Emma stays very still and hopes the others stayed on the bridge as promised. 

"Hey," she offers feeling unsure. She swallows, "Seems like you're having a bad day."

In front of her Jefferson's eyes are wide and he sways, clutching his head with his gun hand. The scowl he has been wearing starts to fade and he shakes his head like he's throwing off water. 

"Never one to skimp on the pain," he murmurs. There's a _clank_ as his pistol falls to the floor beside him, him crumpling down next to it until he's kneeling on the floor.

"_Emma_," he names her, looking terrified as he does. "Oh dear, I think I've finally lost my mind." 

She keeps her motions slow and telegraphed as she walks forward, her eyes locked on his with each step until she's directly in front of him and her neck aches from the angle. She slowly sinks down until she's sitting, knees pulled up to her chest and feet brushing against his knees.

"No," she assures him, "you've just been given some bad info." Emma tries to smile.

One of his hands reaches out, pinching harshly at her shoulder, but she endures it with only a grimace. When he goes to pinch her again she slaps him away.

"I'm real," she assures him.

"Apparently," he muses unaware of the relief it gives her to hear that. Jefferson cocks his head and narrows his eyes, "Am I?"

"The jury's still out."

+

Jefferson doesn't leave her side, content enough to stick to her shadow as she and the others do their best to make sure no permanent damage has been done to the ship. He touches her more than she remembers him doing before, a brush of knuckles against her arm or bumping his arm into hers as they walk. Each time it tugs on something in her chest and makes her want to hide. In one moment of weakness, Emma reaches out and tangles her fingers with his just long enough to squeeze his hand.

Jefferson isn't the only one sticking to her side since Jefferson boarded the ship. Jones and Billy had broken their promises and had been watching from around the corner when Jefferson had boarded.

She's missed him more than she cares to admit. Him tearing across the 'verse after her in a rage is troubling, sure, but it's also flattering in ways she can't comprehend. Touching in ways she wasn't aware she warranted. 

"Is it so hard to imagine someone might worry about you the way you're worried about Ruby?" He muses, still staring into the core of the engine. “You’ll want to move, boys.”

Under the engine, something falls and Billy curses, sliding out from under it to stare in confusion at Jefferson. Jones' head follows in suit, popping up from the other side of the engine.

"He's very intuitive," Emma explains. "Irritatingly so." 

Jefferson makes a derisive noise but doesn't argue. After a moment his eyes move to lock up with Jones and a wicked-looking smile spreads across his face. "_Pirate,_" he says stringing the word out gleefully.

"Hey," she tugs on his hand until his attention is back on her. "I need Ruby back," Emma watches him, looking for a spark of understanding in the manic energy in his eyes. "She's all that matters now, so save the terror campaigns for another day?"

Jefferson inclines his head, "If you insist."

"I'm serious. I won't let anything, not even you stand in my way."

He snorts, "I may be mad, but even _I_ am under no illusion that I wouldn't survive your disappointment in me."

Emma considers him, finally nodding. "Speaking of, how the hell has the _Cheshire_ not drugged you to the gills?"

"Oh, she tried," Jefferson smiles with too many teeth. "I've been looking for you for a _long_ time, Emma. _Cheshire_ eventually ran out of her _purr_."

Wonderful, Emma thinks. When the 'verse finally gets back on track she's going to have to spend a year getting everyone settled back in their place. Her eyes flicker over to where Jones is working and she wonders what kind of leeway their contract holds.

"The darkest of hearts still remember how to beat," Jefferson muses as he pokes at an engine coupling. "You'd be surprised how easily they can be coaxed into action with only a little kindness."

Emma returns her attention to the ship. Its sound is still off, but Emma can hear fragments of the _Jolly Roger_'s song in the hum of the engine.

"Yeah," Emma allows. "She's a good enough ship when she wants to be."

Jefferson scowls over at Emma, "_Still_ willfully ignorant, I see."

"Where did you find this guy, again?" Billy queries from under the engine. 

"The most wanted list," Jefferson offers unabashedly.

+

Jefferson and Jones do not get along, contrary to Jones' earlier prediction. They snarl and snap at each other at every chance and it gets old long before they manage to clear space for the _Cheshire_ to land in the _Jolly Roger_'s largest hanger.

"Is it really a great idea to have a mad man and a pirate of questionable loyalty on the same ship?" Billy asks from where he's leaning against the hanger and taking in the show.

"Probably not," Emma admits. "But Jefferson's not going to leave quietly and I think Jones would be pissed if I kicked him off his own ship."

Billy says nothing for a while, content in the silence but Emma feels something coming. Emma leaves before another distraction from her mission can stumble into her path.

+

Emma slips her back up taser into Billy's palm when they're alone.

"Just in case," she tells him. "If you think you need to - do it. Then get me."

Billy tests it out, watching the arc of electricity. "Won't he be mad?"

She bites back the obvious comment and settles for, "He understands necessity."

+

Jones is a little too gleeful when she arranges for them to end up alone in the hanger. She throws her main taser to him before he can let loose whatever comment he's dying to make.

"Keep it on you," she tells him. "If you abuse this, I'll abuse _you_."

Jones slips the taser in one of his pockets, sliding forward with his eyes locked on hers. His tongue darts out to wet his lips and play over the tip of one of his canines before he breaks out in a honey-sweet smile. 

"Do you _promise_?"

Emma rolls her eyes but doesn't bother to hide her smirk.

+

Jefferson strolls into her cabin like he was invited, glancing around in disdain at the mess of tablets and clothes. He picks up a grease-covered tank top between two fingers like it might be diseased before dropping it with an exaggerated grimace.

"She's not here," he announces when Emma refuses to rise to his bait. 

Emma blinks, wondering if she's missed something. Again. 

"The wolf cub," Jefferson rolls his eyes like having to spell it all out physically pains him. "You're looking in the wrong place."

Her heart is thudding in her ears suddenly and it takes all her effort not to break her tablet or maybe even her fist into his face.

"Explain," she demands.

"Ruby," he says in a clipped tone, "is not _here_." He motions around them in a circle. 

Deep breaths. "Where is she, then?"

Jefferson's annoyance fades into something like pity, "I told you they were dangerous, you saw it in them when you met them on -" 

"Get out," she demands. "Get out of my cabin and go take your fucking medication."

He reels back as if she'd physically struck him -and oh, he's _lucky_ she hasn't - and looks more confused than anything by her anger.

"Wh-"

She stops him with a well-placed throw of her tablet crashing into the wall behind him. "_Out._"

He scowls at her, turning to leave but not before looking back at her with disdain. "One of these days you're going to have to accept that life isn't as sane as you want it to be."

Emma lasts until the doors to her cabin are closed behind him before the tears start.

+

She coms Marco before bed, it's the first time she's ever done so and his surprise is evident enough when he picks up.

"Emma," he greets her warmly, but he stops and his smile falters as he looks her over. 

"Nothing is going right," she tells him. "_Nothing._"

Marco nods solemnly, "Ah, yes. That will happen from time to time."

Emma doesn't want to hear that though. She wants him to tell her it will get better. She wants him to peel an orange for her. She wants to hear that his son has returned home and that they're a family again.

"You're not the girl I first met," he tells her with a lopsided smile. "This woman you have become is strong, and the burden of the strong is that they often must carry more than their share."

"I don't want to be strong," she says in a tiny voice that she can't recognize. "I want someone to carry _me_ for once."

Marco makes a thoughtful sound, "That would require you letting someone close to you."

Emma's about to say something but a light rapping on her door interrupts her thoughts. She glances down at Marco on her screen. 

"Go," he says waving her off. "You know where I am."

Emma gives him a small smile before disconnecting. She wipes absently at her face and calls _come in_.

Jones is the one to pull open her door, and for a moment he just stands there watching her. Eventually, he clears his throat, eyebrows raised in silent question.

"I said _come in_," Emma reminds him.

"Ah," he shakes his hook towards her, "you did, didn't you." Jones wanders in, closing the door behind her and once again looks her over in a way that has nothing to do with his normally playful leers.

"Did you need something?" She snaps, tucking some hair behind her ear.

"Couldn't sleep," he lies. "The same crazed man who previously shot an EMP at my ship is currently throwing cups around the galley. Unsettling business, that."

Emma groans, hanging her head. "Is he yelling or just throwing things?"

"So far he's made himself content with simply throwing things."

"I'll go talk-"

Jones holds a hand out to stop her, "It's only cups, love. There are enough cups on board to handle 400 souls, I'm sure he won't find the time to destroy them all."

"Yeah, but with Jefferson sometimes 'only cups' can get ugly."

Jones nods and looks off to the side, "So I gathered." He pauses, then turns and flashes a conman's smile at her, "You seem to have a practiced hand with him, though." 

Emma narrows her eyes, "You're _well_ aware what my last few months have involved, so when I say I'm too tired for this shit - I mean it."

"Do you trust him?"

She wasn't expecting that, but she rarely knows where Jones' mind is going - only that it's always going somewhere.

"That's complicated," she hedges.

"I'm noticing that things have a tendency to be that way when you're involved," he says with a hard look.

"He's sick," Emma reminds Jones. "But that doesn't mean he isn't a good man."

"He's a man who admitted to questioning and killing my former first mate."

She finds she isn't bothered by that and suspects Jones isn't either. They're not the best examples of humanity, but then again they've never claimed to be. 

"Smee sold out you and more than a few of your ships' secrets to me for a hot meal. He told Jefferson I was dead without having any proof," she reminds Jones. "Hell, he probably did it just to make sure his claim to my ship wouldn't be challenged. So, yeah, I'm not really broken up over it and I don't think you're the type of man to let go of betrayal easily."

Jones shrugs her accusations off, "He's a dangerous man, your friend." 

"The same could be said of anyone on this ship." Emma stands, "I've got to go check on him. You've just come off your shift, right? Feel free to crash here until I deal with him."

Jones slips into the saucy grin Emma hadn't seen since they left the _Den_, one eyebrow quirked up as he taps a finger against his lips.

"Are you asking me to warm your bed, darling?" He purrs.

"I'm asking you to stay out of trouble, Jones," she says deadpan, leaving before he sees the traitorous hint of a curl on her lips. As she closes the door behind her she swears she hears him whisper _Jones_.


	14. Chapter 14

"You're scaring the captain of this ship."

Jefferson pauses his ransacking of the cabinets to turn and stare at Emma with overly bright eyes.

"I wasn't aware we were pretending he was the one in charge here," he smiles condescendingly.

Emma gives him an unimpressed look, "Did you take your meds?"

"Yes, yes," he tells her shortly. "Pretty pills were lined up and swallowed down like ships drifting on the Rim."

"So why are you punishing the glassware?"

Jefferson scowls down at the cup in his hand, holding it up for her to see, "This is not a proper teacup."

"I'm sure you've got one on your ship? Can't you run and gra-"

"There are no cups on my ship," Jefferson says with a twitch. 

Emma wonders just how long he'd been chasing after her ghost, just how much of his ship survived if this is what his moods have been like.

"I dreamed that you were in a white room putting needles into your arm," he tells her, eyes fixed on the cup in his hands. "You were crying and sometimes you'd talk to me but you were always facing the wrong direction and could never hear me when I tried to talk to you."

"…Needles?" she echoes faintly.

Jefferson rubs absently at the crook of his elbow. "_15 red, 20 blue, 57 black, 8 clear_," he sings softly. 

Emma moves away from Jefferson, her hand falling helplessly over the space her holster normally occupies. 

"You aren't comfortable with this," he observes. "Then again, you never are."

"How did you…. How-"

"The truth is _so_ important to you. You can't stand when people lie to you and yet you hate and ignore the truth even more when it's inconvenient." He shakes his head like she's disappointed him, "What do you want from me, Emma? How many times do I have to know something I shouldn't before you'll admit it's _not_ a coincidence."

Jefferson sighs, setting the glass back down in the cupboard with exaggerated care. "I'm going to sleep now," he tells her. "Tell the _captain_ I promise not to break anything else for at least a day."

Emma is still standing there, unsure of what's happening or why as he exits the room leaving only her and broken glass in his wake.

+

Emma's cabin is noticeably cleaner when she finally makes her way back to it. Her clean clothes are folded in piles in the open shelves, the dirty ones in a hamper she vaguely remembered seeing at some point, and her files and tablets are arranged on the desk. The trashcan by her tiny restroom is stuffed full of empty water bags and bottles.

"It was a bit of a mess," Jones says defensively, looking like he suddenly realized what he'd done and regretted it. 

"Understatement of the year," she assures him. "I've been kinda bad about that stuff since…" Emma makes a vague gesture with her hand unsure if she means _forever_ or the slightly worse habits she'd developed ever since Granny walked her to a door and told her she owned everything inside.

"Well," he says with feigned mirth, clearly anxious to move on from the topic. "Did you manage to save any of our cups?"

"Some, I think," Emma frowns down at her bed and the lines of her sheets. "Wow, I've only ever seen that in fancy hotels."

"Hospital corners."

Emma frowns, "I never noticed them in hospitals."

"No," he chuckles, smiling down at the floor. "When the sheets look like _that_ it known as hospital corners, love."

"Ah," Emma isn't sure what to say to that. "It's impressive? I mean, I normally let stuff lay where it falls."

"So I've noticed," he teases.

An awkward silence falls and Emma finds herself unsure of what to do with herself. 

Jones clears his throat. "Well, I should be going-"

"No," she blurts out. "You should stay." 

He raises a cautious eyebrow, "I should?"

"Jefferson promised not to break anything else, but it's still probably going to quieter here than in the cabin next to him," it's a flimsy excuse but it's the best Emma can manage. 

He inclines his head, traces of a smile on his face. "If the lady insists."

Emma grabs her soft pants and sleep shirt from one of the shelves, ducking into the bathroom and away from his smile. She manages to change only banging her knee on the walls twice in the cramped space. She stops herself from leaving her work clothes on the floor at the last moment, scooping them up and taking them with her as she leaves. Under Jones' watchful eye she deposits them in the hamper. A quick glance confirms his pleased smile in response. 

A second glance confirms that his shirt, prosthetic brace, and hook are gone. Emma's eyes linger over the cruel scars and folds of skin that make up the end of his left arm longer than she'd like. There's a story there, but Emma has more than enough of her own stories to keep her awake at night and angry at the 'verse.

When she looks back up to his face he's watching her with a detached sense of curiosity that tells her only that he's carried the loss long enough to embrace it. 

"I don't care," she tells him, surprised to find that she's only mostly sure she's talking about how he ended up like that.

He raises an insufferable eyebrow at her again, looking almost amused by her reaction.

It's then that she notices that he table where she normally keeps her holster sits a pile of folded clothes. Emma feels a jolt of instinctive panic at what she doesn't see.

"Where's my gun?"

Jones points to the wall by the door where, sure enough, her holster and gun hang from a coat hook. Emma scowls, walking over and removing her gun and leaving the holster behind. 

"Cleaning is fine. Clean all you want," she advises him as she shoves his pile of clothes back towards the wall until there's enough room for her pistol to lay on the side table. 

"If this moves," She points to her gun, "it better be because _I_ moved it. Touching a gun without the owner's permission is a _great_ way to end up on someone's bad side. That, or dead."

Jones gives her a deferential nod, "Aye, I'll keep that in mind."

For a moment they both stand there, looking at each other. It's not entirely unpleasant, but Emma's not exactly comfortable with the odd smile that keeps sneaking out from behind Jones' carefully blank expression.

"Get in already," she finally snaps. "I've got the next shift so I'm not taking the wall side unless you want me to kick your ass to the floor when I get up."

Jones doesn't bother to reign in his smirk as he complies. Emma gives a moment to get settled before she follows him in and claims her half. Her bed is smaller than the one in his cabin, not by much but enough that there isn't the same divide between them like last time. Bigger beds are probably a perk of being captain, she rationalizes. 

Unless of course you're the captain of a Wren sized ship and never got the memo.

Emma reaches over, manually turning off the lights and doing her best to simply _exist_. She's not very good at it, more than once her tossing and turning had kept Jefferson up - even on the nights where she only mentally tossed and turned.

"Do you believe in anything crazy?" She asks Jones, turning just enough she can make out his carefully neutral face in the darkness.

"Like what?"

She shrugs as much as her position allows, "Things that you can't explain? Things that scare you?"

Jones laughs, a sad and smoky sound, "Well, I was in love once, so I guess I believe in that."

"No," she protests. "Something bigger than that."

"Nothing's bigger than _that_.”

Emma makes a frustrated sound, "I mean something like… someone who knew things they shouldn't - _couldn't_ know. Things no one but you knew."

Jones is silent for a while, but eventually, there's a rustle of fabric and Emma can almost feel his breath on her skin.

"That friend of yours said something strange to me when I found him in the galley today," he tells her in an even tone. "Something like that, maybe?"

Emma nods.

"Well," he breathes. "To be completely honest with you, I'm not sure _exactly_ how compression coils work. Like any captain worth my salt I do know the function they serve, what price they go for, and could probably figure out how to install one if needed. Still, I couldn't build one much less tell you what I'd need to even attempt such a thing."

"_Jones_," she says unsure if she's threatening him or begging for something.

"I find that I like it when you call me that," he whispers to her. "I also like when my ship flies steady and safe so I make myself content knowing I can provide her with parts or a mechanic who knows what I don't if needed. That can be enough if you let it be," Jones assures her.

Emma digests that, unsure which parts to focus on. It's too much to take in after such a long day and it seems easier to shelf all her confusing thoughts and feign sleep, so she does.

"Swan?" Jones asks softly before trying a tentative "_Emma?_"

She keeps her eyes closed and her breathing even and hopes she's better at feigning sleep than she is at being a good person.

+

Emma wakes up to a feeling of intense unease that she's can't place. Behind her, she can hear the soft snores of Jones, but something besides his presence in her room is amiss. She keeps her body relaxed and still, carefully opening her eyes to peek around and-

"What the fuck!?" She snaps at Jefferson's face as it looms mere inches from her face. He's sitting on the floor, elbows on his knees and his hands propping up his chin while he stares dead-eyed and unblinking at her.

Behind her, Jones has startled awake as well, and _fuck everything_.

"You're awake," Jefferson observes dryly. "Your shift should be starting soon."

Behind her Jones makes a deeply unhappy noise followed by a muffled sigh.

"It is - in my experience - considered common courtesy to wait until one-bed partner has already left before inviting another in," Jones says with more than a little trace of sleep in his voice.

"Emma's not one for common courtesy," Jefferson says seemingly unconcerned with the way Emma is glaring at him.

"_What the fuck_," Emma reiterates. 

"I got bored," Jefferson says defensively. "Your mechanic friend is the one who suggested I go see if you were awake."

Emma's eye twitches. "How long have you been here?"

Jefferson gives her a smug smirk that makes her want to slap it off his face.

"I'm going to kill you," she hisses.

"No," he says sounding quite sure. "You aren't the one who will kill me."

Emma wants to continue to be angry, but something uncomfortable settles in her chest. _People don't know the future,_ she reminds herself. 

_They don't normally know the past either._

Still, Emma is tempted to ask _who_ and demand other answers if just to be there on the day and time he gives her. Not to save him, of course, just to prove him wrong.

Jefferson squints up at her, "You're lying to yourself about something and I don't even need to read you to know that."

"Were you here for a reason, _mate_?" Jones growls from behind her in something that sounds like his Hook voice.

"Of course," Jefferson says sounding almost offended. He rolls his eyes at Emma like she's in on the absurdity he perceives. 

"And the reason _is_?" Emma prompts.

"You'll believe me today," he tells her looking suddenly sober. "And we change course."

Emma wants to close her eyes and fake sleep again, but she knows it won't work. "Is that all?" She asks warily.

Jefferson's eyes skitter away from hers and Emma finds herself stretching out an arm until she can brush her hand against his. 

_Oh,_ Emma thinks. She's watched people like that before, drunk in the sight of them and stored them away for the times she wouldn't be able to see them. She'd watched Graham like that once, Granny and Ruby too.

"I missed you too," she whispers, tugging on one of his fingers and hoping he understands how much that admission bleeds her. "Now get out of my cabin and get me some coffee before I put Jones' hook up your ass."

Jefferson makes a great show of his relocation being an inconvenience which tells Emma her message got through.

+

"What am I looking at?"

Jefferson looks tempted to say something snarky, but he stops at Emma's look. 

"A holding station, of the Alliance variety."

"I've checked arrest records," once a day – at least - since the day Ruby disappeared, but he doesn't need to know that if he hasn't already figured it out. "Ruby hasn't been arrested."

"Yes, and somehow Emma Swan is considered dead while Elizabeth Mallard continues to thrive." Jefferson rolls his eyes, "I'm guessing you never asked _who_ exactly made your IdentiCards, have you?"

"Don't look at the engine of a free ship," Emma says with a shrug. "I'm gonna need more proof than my-"

Jefferson rolls his eyes, leaning over and rudely snatching the tablet from her. He fusses with it for a second before handing it back to Emma. It's a list of names, recent intakes from the looks of it, and none of them mean anything to Emma until…

"_Scarlet_." Emma reads aloud, "Scarlet Leeva?" She scowls, tossing the tablet back to Jefferson. "This could be a coincidence."

"I lead your search to _this_ particular station where you _immediately_ found a recent intake's name that jumped out at you the moment you saw it." He gives her a look that all but screams of contempt. "Yup, _gotta_ be a coincidence."

+

Jefferson follows her back to her cabin and watches as she tugs off her pajama pants and slides into the ATMO suit she'd bought to replace her red one.

"This is probably really inappropriate," he says as he cocks his head to the side as he watches her skin disappear under the black material of the suit, "but I want to kiss you."

Emma pauses long enough to press a short kiss to his lips before continuing to dress, "Of all the inappropriate things I've done in my life," she tells him with a small smile, "having a man want to kiss me when he watches me get dressed isn't even making the top five-hundred."

"Has the pirate kissed you yet?"

Emma sigs, closing her eyes, "Jefferson-"

"It'd be okay if he did," he says quietly. "I'm not so mad as to think I can tame you, let alone keep you all to myself."

She finishes dressing in silence, carefully keeping her mind on the mission at hand and not on the men on her ship.

+

"Are we going to talk about this?"

Emma doesn't bother looking up from the console, "Do we _need_ too?"

Billy considers her in silence. "If we get a lead - _any_ lead-"

"We'll follow it without hesitation," she finishes for him. She stops inputting the confusing string of data required and turns to face Billy. "But - and I hate to say this - he knows _things_."

His expression shutters, telling Emma he like Jones has had his own run-in with their resident mad man. 

"You said he was intuitive," Billy accuses.

Emma doesn't bother responding, instead, she turns back around and finishes inputting the information. She hasn't begun to fully understand let alone _accept_ what Jefferson knows, she knows she's in no position to argue it causes. More importantly, she knows she doesn't need too.

+

Jefferson shows up halfway through her shift, ration bar in hand and held out towards her like an offering. Emma snatches the bar up, motioning to the second chair. He sits, straight-backed, and looks over the console with an air of boredom.

"Did you piss someone off?" Emma wonders aloud, only half-serious.

"Likely," he admits. "The truth is rarely appreciated - even less so on a ship staffed solely by people who go out of their way to dwell in the spaces between the lies and the truths they want to ignore."

She keeps a reign in on the smile that threatens break free. "We can't all be as perfect as you."

Jefferson gives her one of his special looks that implies she's a great burden he's forced to endure. 

They exist comfortably enough in the silence, Jefferson watching the stars and Emma absently sending out scans to help pass the time.

"Thank you," he tells her, eyes still fixed on the stars. 

Emma half-heartedly looks over the result of the latest scan before deleting it. "For what?"

"You're starting to trust me," he says plainly. "It must be incredibly difficult for you, but you're trying."

"I'm desperate," she corrects him. "I'd try anything at this point."

"And of all your options, you're choosing to second guess a truth you held dear." Jefferson hums, "I'm aware that a move like that could probably make you feel like you're losing your mind."

Emma's fingers become clumsy, too big for the console. She curls them into fists and hides them in her lap. 

"You're not," He assures her as an afterthought. "Trust me, I'm a bit of an expert on the matter."

When she glances over to him he's filed all his sharp edges away, leaving the soft and open man who talked about tea parties with his daughter exposed. 

"You know, you still haven't explained why those blue hand guys would be interested in Ruby."

The edges come back, and his eyes go cold, "No, I haven't."

Emma waits, willing the soft-eyed man back. The 'verse must be feeling generous because something in Jefferson thaws enough that his sneer falls away leaving him looking defeated in her silence.

"There's a princess in a forest," he says softly.

"I've heard this one before," Emma interrupts, scrunches up her eyes and wishing something could be easy for once.

"You've heard, but you don't _listen_," he hisses already riding another mercurial wave of emotion. Jefferson takes a deep breath, "This princess starts her journey in the forest and goes to a town that could lead her to hundreds of possible destinations. It seems important, but really, it's not. It's filler, just stretching out the time until she's in front of the Evil Queen in the end because that's how the story has to go. Choosing to visit the mines instead of the seaport first doesn't change anything _truly_ important, in the big picture it just means she's one destination closer to where she _will_ be."

"_Jefferson,_" she begs, rubbing at her temple as if to ward off a future headache. 

He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath before continuing. "The princess has a final destination, yes?"

Emma nods, able to follow that much. "The Evil Queen."

"Right," he praises. "And she'll always end up there, no matter what."

"So why is the journey even a part of her story?"

"Because while legends can be born, heroes must be forged on their journeys," Jefferson says with a sad and crooked smile. "That's why they don't always live long enough to become heroes."

Emma wants to turn around and leave, maybe even turn the whole damn ship around. She wants to beat Jefferson until he starts making sense. She wants to put a gun to his head and demand he stops trying to drown her in his nonsense words and while he's at it could he stop looking like _she's_ the one breaking _his_ heart.

She won't though. She can't.

Jefferson, for all his flaws is still the person she would have given _anything_ to have been able to speak with during those weeks from hell. He's the kind of man who took up a quest of vengeance in her name, taking at least one life in the process. He's shared her bed and her loneliness. He's understood all the angry little parts of her that are both too empty and too full, showing her his own defective parts in turn. Even the soft and gentle memories he has of Grace - be she real or a product of his madness - has been offered up for Emma to see.

As much as she can imply and threaten otherwise, Emma won't - _can't_ \- bring herself to injure him in any of the ways that would make this all easier. 

She stares at him, feeling the hot tears prickling behind her eyes and is grateful that at least she can hate him for taking those options from her. Standing on unsteady feet she moves until she's in front of his chair, slowly she kneels to the floor. Jefferson watches her with stormy eyes that make Emma want to say and do things that would surely destroy them both.

"I _know_ you can talk to me, you've done it before," she reminds him with steel in her voice. "Please, just _tell_ me what I need to know."

Jefferson smiles apologetically, reaching out to tentatively cup his hand over the side of her head. "If inflicting a little pain on Ruby would save her life in the long run - would you do it?" 

He trails his fingers down her hair, barely touching her along the way and it sends a spike of bitter cold through Emma that she can put a name too. "I would," she agrees. "But only if it was the only way."

"Of course," Jefferson murmurs. "It's not fair, you know, how often love is pain when we expect only happiness."

Emma hangs her head, knowing nothing useful will be coming anytime soon. Warning bells are sounding in the back of her head, but for what, she has no idea. 

"Jefferson," she whispers, letting him continue to run his fingers through her hair, "do you understand what would happen if I felt someone knowingly put an obstacle between me and Ruby?"

"I do." He smiles, "The cold bodies of many men and women on Santos can attest to the ferocity with which you love." 

She sags, letting her body fall forward until her head is resting on his lap. She's tired. Maybe even more than she was after Ruby first disappeared. Above her, Jefferson keeps petting her hair.

He makes a sad noise, his voice falling to a whisper, "It's lucky for the 'verse that you've still not managed to love yourself."


	15. Chapter 15

They can't get close enough to have Billy patch into the base's systems - not in a ship like the _Jolly Roger_. Whatever they go in with it's clear that short of total destruction of the fleet surrounding the Alliance base they're going to need to escape on the _Jolly Roger_. None of the shuttles, not even the _Cheshire_ can outrun most of the ships on patrol. What's worse, they can't afford to take _Cheshire_ out without abandoning someone to stay behind to keep the other ship ready for their getaway.

"Three people against an army of Alliance guys isn't an option," Billy points out as he spins the schematics of the base.

"And four is _so_ much better," Jefferson drawls.

+

When plans have been made and remade until no more reasonable objections could be made Jones parks the _Jolly Roger_ behind a nearby moon and everyone shuffles off to pretend to get some sleep.

Jefferson grabs Emma's wrist before she can duck into her cabin.

"Cup of tea?" he asks with a small smile.

Emma wants to object, but she knows there is no rest to be found in her bed tonight. "Yeah," she allows, letting him lead her to the galley.

+

Jefferson is mostly quiet as he putters around the galley, only occasionally cursing inanimate objects as he goes. He eventually procures two mismatched cups that pass muster and ends up using a large saucepan in place of a tea kettle. When it's ready sets them all down on the table without his normal flourish, pouring her cup first.

They drink in silence, playing a game where neither of them looks away from the other and both of them try to smile.

"You're going to get her back," he tells her when both the pan and their cups go dry. "You'll bring her to her home."

Emma wants to believe him, "Did the 'verse tell you this?"

Jefferson nods, looking down to his cup as he turns it slowly in between his hands. "It did," he smiles fondly over to her. "Just like it sang me your song."

"Then why didn't it tell you I was alive?"

"It tried, but after I found the _Bug_..." Jefferson trails off. "You've seen me on my bad days. Nothing makes sense on those days, hell, I've held conversations with my piano on those days. It was easy enough to write what I was being told off when the line between a fantastic lie and a fantastic truth is so thin." 

"You didn't _believe_," Emma says, not meaning for it to come out as accusatory as it does.

Jefferson nods. "I get it now, more than I ever understood your motivations before. Hurting can be easier than believing."

Emma wishes she had more tea to drink, anything, she just wants a distraction from the man in front of her. 

"I haven't dreamt of Grace in months," he tells her in a whispery voice. "I've felt _nothing_ about her in even longer."

"Do you know why?"

Jefferson laughs and Emma wants to run far, far away from the sound. 

+

Later he walks her to her cabin, stopping outside her door and leaning forward to place a chaste kiss to her forehead. When he walks away Emma has the strangest urge to call out, to make him stop, to make him follow her into her room but she can't find her voice.

+

Using _Cheshire_ and Elizabeth Mallard's bounty hunter credentials Emma and her apprentice are given permission to approach the normally off-limits base given the fact that she holds two of the Alliance's most wanted in her brig. 

They welcome her with open arms and a promise of a free round of drinks. Emma agrees, helping herself to the information on their servers as she makes absent small chat with the Lieutenant who's guiding her towards the docking bays over the radio.

In a matter of seconds she has Scarlet's file up and open and Ruby is staring back at her in a mugshot. Absently Emma reads the charges - possession of false papers, attempted bribery of port authorities on Beaumonde, attempted escape of custody, and assault on Alliance officials. Emma would be impressed if it didn't end with Ruby in jail under a false name and sentenced to forty years hard labor.

Billy makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob at the sight of it and while Emma doesn't cry, it's a close thing when he gathers her up in a bone-crushing hug. Over Billy's shoulder, Jefferson catches her eye. He doesn't gloat, he just smiles at her like it was her and not him that brought them here. On the other side of him Jones is smug enough for both of them.

"Let's go break this lass of yours out so I can see what all the fuss is about," Jones suggests with a toothy grin.

+

Emma is the one to put Jones in cuffs as Billy sees to Jefferson. 

"Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence," he muses, "I _do_ wonder what it means when a woman has tried to capture me as many times as you have."

"Maybe it means you're not as good of a criminal as you think you are," Billy chimes in.

Emma rolls her eyes and tries to get them all back on track, "You two _sure_ you can get out of these?"

Jones smirks, meeting her eyes and sure enough, there's a faint creak of metal and then he's dangling his cuffs from one hand. It takes a few seconds longer for Jefferson, but sure enough, he also manages to slip his.

+

Billy doesn't like it, but he understands why it's him who stays with the ship. It can't be Emma, she's their ticket in as Elizabeth and while Elizabeth's apprentice would be expected to shadow her at work, being allowed to shadow her into a high-level facility wouldn't be as reasonable. Someone has to keep the ship ready and they all know that Jefferson and Jones will be the easiest to get in without raising any extra suspicion.

"I'll be here," he calls out unnecessarily as she grabs the others by the elbows, dragging them forward.

Emma ignores him, unwilling to risk the prying eyes in the hanger seeing something they shouldn't.

"Move it," she tells Jones, shoving him forward.

+

There's a low level of adrenaline coursing through her body right up until she puts a collapsible baton upside one of her escorts heads and Granny's custom boots to the neck of the other. His whole body arches, an arc of pale lightning connecting his lips as he screams in silence. Emma watches with a detached fascination before returning to the objective at hand.

Behind her the cuffs have come off and the last two escorts are down. Hook and the Mad Man stare back at her, waiting for her word. It's an intoxicating feeling, one she didn't expect. Around them, prisoners packed four to a cell crowd up to the force fields and cheer, uncaring or unknowingly putting a flaw in some of the stealthier elements they'd been hoping for.

"Open 'em up as we go," she decides on a whim, jerking her head towards the cell beside her. 

There are no arguments, no questions, both men simply get to work while Emma files what she's feeling away for another day.

It takes longer than she'd like, but Hook does something that results in the force fields around them flickering out and dying. Just like that she's leading the Mad Man and Hook on a rampage through waves of terrified Alliance personnel backed by a mob of prisoners that act as a smokescreen of chaos, rage, and if need be, cannon fodder.

+

Emma spots her long before Ruby sees her.

At first, Ruby looks at her like she doesn't recognize Emma, but after a moment the tears start to fall and Ruby is pressing as close to the field between them as she can whispering _Emma?_ over and over again.

"Get this down, Hook," Emma barks.

"Working on it, love," he snaps. Sure enough seconds later the whole row is powered down and Ruby is throwing herself into Emma's arms.

"I wanna go home now," she says softly. "Take me home?"

"Yeah," Emma promises her, burying her fist in Ruby's hair. There's more to tell her, what feels like an endless amount of things she Ruby needs to know, a list that starts with _Billy's waiting_ to _why didn't you talk to me_ to _you should have known better_ but Emma can't say any of that like this. Not with a mob at her back and blood drying on her hands. 

Ruby seems to understand, detaching and sliding her hand into Emma's left hand with a soft squeeze.

"Watch her," Emma demands of her very own Mad Man. "No one touches her."

"If they touch a hair on her head they will lose their heads," he promises, inserting himself between Ruby and the crowd and giving Ruby a wide smile and outstretched hand. "Follow me, my darling, there are adventures to be had."

+

Billy's waiting in the hangar bay with Emma's scattergun in hand and bodies on the floor. Ruby stumbles when she sees him, her face blanching. Emma squeezes her hand hard enough Ruby looks to her.

"You don't just _walk_ someone out of Alliance prison," she tells her in a firm voice. "_This_ is what it took to get you out."

Ruby searches her face, looking wounded as she tries to pull away from Emma's hand. Emma holds fast.

"I'm not saying this to make you feel guilty - I'm saying this so you don't make _him_ feel guilty. If you have to blame someone, blame me."

+

Hook gets the shuttle back to the _Jolly Roger_ and gets her roaring away into the black. He avoids Emma's eyes the same way everyone else is. 

Hook stands like a statue before the navigation console, Jefferson tucked into the corner of the bridge muttering to himself in a ragged voice. Emma sits behind the secondary console and lets the rush of stars wash over her as she rubs her thumb over Graham's star.

They're all a little raw, still tapped into the worst parts of themselves so much that it takes almost an hour to notice Billy and Ruby had disappeared into Billy’s cabin.

"I need to com Granny," Emma muses with no intention of moving anytime soon. "Maybe then hit the gym until I can convince my body to sleep for a week or so."

Hook breaks his staring match with the console, his eyes sweeping her in a plainly animal appraisal before he flashes her a savage grin. "If you require assistance, I gladly offer up my services as a sleeping aid." 

Emma smiles back at him, enjoying the pleasant clench in her belly and is half tempted to take him up on it. While she's sure it would be fun to take Hook to her bed, she's knows it's time to shake out the darkness from her blood, not revel in it.

He inclines his head as if he understands her unspoken decision, still, there's a promise in his eyes that the offer stands.

+

Emma takes a shower, then she takes another. 

When she's done she pulls on her softest sleep pants and the first clean tank top she finds and makes her way barefoot towards Billy's cabin. She knocks twice.

"I'll be in the galley for a while," she calls through the door before turning and making her way there.

She doesn't have to wait long - she's not even halfway there when the slapping of feet and the light scent of soap catches up to her. Ruby falls in step easily enough, pushing her still wet hair back as she smiles shyly up at Emma.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey," Emma agrees with a smile.

+

There's no cocoa on board - not much in the way of food outside of ration bars, protein paste, and a box of tea that Jefferson dug out from his ship but they make do with what they have. Ruby eats a whole bar on her own and follows it up with two bowls of shrimp flavored protein paste.

Emma watches in silence, picking at her own ration bar absently. She's hungry, but not for food.

"It feels like I was in there forever," Ruby confides in a hoarse voice, staring down in contemplation at her empty bowl.

Emma wants to tell her that it wasn't forever, it was four months that stretched out in between the moment Emma wasn't there to protect Ruby and the moment she smashed a baton into the face of the guard who got between her and Ruby's cell.

She knows Ruby won't blame her for where she was. She knows that Granny and the others never did, but Emma also knows she'll live and die blaming herself.

"I'm here," Emma tells her, aware that she sounds like she's asking permission for something. 

Ruby's face twists up in confusion, a soft hand reaching out to brush against Emma's. 

"This wasn't your fault," she says with more fire than she looks capable of. "_I'm_ the one who ran off. You didn't get me into this situation - I did."

"Still," Emma says.

+

Ruby ends up being the one to contact Granny that night with Billy next to her and part of Emma is terribly grateful she didn't have to witness it. 

"I've never seen her cry before," Ruby hisses, looking more panicked than touched by Granny's tears. "Why do I feel like that means she's going to kill me?

+

There's enough of them on board now and more than enough claims the Alliance is looking for them that they're doubling up on bridge shifts. Billy is spending most of his shifts working with Ruby, teaching her the way to navigate the _Jolly Roger_'s systems during the downtime. Jones helps her as well, and from what Emma's hearing from him Ruby is a natural.

"She's always been a quick study," Emma agrees. To this day Emma's still not really sure what Ruby does at the _Den_, only that it has something to do with the coms, the news feeds, and why ships not welcomed in Granny's territory sometimes end up flying blind. 

Jones hums, absently sending out another scan. They're wasting a lot of power scanning so frequently, but as he pointed out being a little low on power is better than being a little slow to notice the Alliance coming to kill them.

"Your Elizabeth identity is done," he tells her as he waits for the computer to finish. He's kind enough that he doesn't say the obvious bits about how her career is done, how a new name won't help when hers has been featured on every news feed from the Core in the last 48 hours, or how there's a chance someone has connected seventeen-year-old Emma Swan to Elizabeth Mallard who's only existed on paper for a decade.

"It doesn't matter."

She gets a raised eyebrow in response.

"I'm getting Ruby home soon," she says allowing herself to feel content with that. "You kept your end of the bargain - it's only fair I keep mine." Emma doesn't tell him how she's been ready for that moment for a lot longer than she's known him, but she does hope he understands that she won't hate him for it.

Jones says nothing for a while, reading over the reports of the scan before dismissing them. She has to strain to hear him when he finally speaks.

"Do you truly believe I've only stayed at your side so that I might have a chance to kill you?"

"I stole your ship," she reminds him in a hollow voice, "stranded your crew in shuttles, and almost killed us both because I practically lost my goddamn mind and was shooting up with Class-V uppers to stay awake."

"That was a bit annoying," he admits with more amusement than she feels is reasonable to have given the circumstance.

"_Annoying?_"

"I don't mean to offend you, darling, but I've spent time in the tender clutches of the likes of Niska and Mills. I've actually spent some wonderful vacations with lovely women who trussed me up much as you did, but who were not all of them were being careful about checking on my circulation as you were."

Emma narrows her eyes and says nothing, finally she stands from her console. "I'm going to get Jefferson," she tells him walking to the door as calmly as she can. "He'll finish my shift for me."

He lets her go, but she can feel his eyes on her back the whole time.

+

Ruby opens her door without question when Emma comes knocking and makes no comment at the sight of her. Or the smell. Emma's pretty sure she smells like the dubious moonshine she'd found in a secret panel behind her bed.

"I'm drunk," Emma tells her unnecessarily.

"Oh, sweetie," Ruby says with a sweet smile, "I kinda figured that out on my own." She reaches out, pulling Emma in her cabin and then herds her towards her bed. 

"I'm not tired," Emma protests, but she sits anyways.

"I am though," Ruby lies. "And I've had a couple of shitty months so how about you lay down with me and keep watch?"

She's tempted to call Ruby out, but more than that she's tempted to be useful. "I can do that," she promises. 

They end up curled into each other on the bed, Ruby resting her head on Emma's shoulder and humming catchy songs Emma only half recognizes. 

"You know you're my hero, right?" Ruby says in a tiny voice. "My very own knight in shining armor."

Emma chokes out a laugh, almost drowns in the tears that come with it. Next to her Ruby is making soft frantic noises and petting her hair, and _god_. 

What's she going to do?

+

She wakes up, sore and sour mouthed to the sound of hushed voices in an unfamiliar room. 

"-hell happened?" Ruby's asking in a fierce whisper.

Emma hears Billy speak, but his voice is too low to make any of it out. There's a sharp slap that sounds like skin on skin, and then Billy's voice is back, even softer than before.

"No," Ruby says cutting him off. "Not tonight. But this isn't over, we're gonna talk about this."

Emma listens to the sounds of footsteps leaving, finally the door to Ruby's cabin closes and there's a dip on the mattress. 

"You're awake, aren't you," Ruby murmurs. 

Emma pulls her face of the pillow, "Yeah."

Ruby reaches out, tucking stray hairs behind Emma's ear, "You wanna talk about it?"

_It_ is a big thing, Emma isn't even sure she knows where _it_ begins. 

"Eventually I might," she concedes. "You?"

"Ah, you know the story," Ruby flashes her a wide smile with no real joy behind it. "Girl feels trapped, girl gets in a fight with her Grandmother and runs off to have an adventure." She chuckles, ducking her head, "Girl has a little _too_ much adventure and wishes she took her friend up on more of those self-defense lessons."

"That girl should have called me," Emma says unable to hide the hurt. "I would have come with you and you could have had all the adventure you wanted."

"Wow, I forgot that you're almost as bad as they are," Ruby swallows, looking away. "You know, I get it. When you guys look at me I know you think I'm weak because my skill sets don't involve a gun or gratuitous violence, but that doesn't mean I'm helpless."

"I didn't-" 

"No, _listen_. I get that I fucked up bad enough that I needed saving and I _know_ that you guys won't forget that any time soon, but at some point you're going to have to accept that while I don't mind having kick-ass guys like you having my back I don't need you guys telling me what I can and can't do. It's like you all forget that I end up saving your asses just as much as you save mine. How many times have I dragged your ass out of a bottle, huh? I'm pretty sure that before me the only time you ever drank anything that wasn't at least fifty proof was when you ran out of money. The _only_ reason Granny isn't rotting in some prison twelve times over is that anytime the Alliance comes around I fuck with the news feeds or their ships' systems until it becomes so unbearable that they have to turn around before the crew mutinies. And Billy," she shakes her head, "I'm the only reason he's _alive_. Despite all that, I know that if I even _tried_ to tell you guys what you couldn't do you'd just laugh in my face."

Emma lays there, quiet and still, unsure of how to fix this moment, this heat in Ruby’s voice.

“I love you guys,” Ruby whispers. “But please don’t act like I’m the only fuck up.”

+

Emma runs through the halls of the ship until she can't. 

She's still collapsed but breathing steady and calm when Jefferson and Jones wander into her line of sight with their disapproving looks that threaten to turn into pity. 

"Just _don't_," she advises them. 

There's been an unholy alliance between them since they got Ruby back, one where they still snap and snarl at each other but the heat is gone. It seemed like a good thing when Emma had first noticed it, but from the way they exchange looks over her head, she's starting to wonder if that isn't the case.

+

"Shower," Jones insists as soon as they reach her cabin.

"You smell _horrid_," Jefferson agrees. 

Emma glares half-heartedly, snatching the offered towel from Jones and marches into her shower. She's not all that surprised to return to the sight of both men preparing for bed. She'd given up long ago trying to keep either of them from treating her room like it was their own. 

"There's no way we'll all fit," she protests because it seems like the thing to do.

"We'll fit," Jefferson assures her.

+

That night Emma sleeps tucked between what a mere day ago could have been mistaken for the personifications of rage and madness and feels safer than she can remember feeling. 

She doesn't think about what that says about her.

+

Whatever issues were between Ruby and Billy seem to melt away along with her time in the prison and soon enough Ruby is filling the halls of the ship with laughter and bright smiles.

"You're handling everything pretty well," Emma observes.

Ruby shrugs, "I'm safe, I'm amongst friends, and I'm happy."

Emma wants to ask Ruby lots of things. She wants to know what made her run. She wants to know what happened when she was caught. She wants to know how to smile like Ruby does, to know what it's like to like her life. 

+

Emma's run before. Hell, she's spent most of her life running, but she's never been chased by heat comparable to what is currently after them. 

Returning to the Den isn't an option and everyone knows it. 

"Just until the heat dies down," Emma assures Ruby.

Ruby nods, putting on a brave face. "When will that be?"

Emma glances towards Jefferson, unsure if she wants to ask about the future or ask about his experience as one of the 'verses most wanted. He meets her eyes, tilting his head and watching her like he can see right through her.

"She'll see her grandmother again," he turns to Ruby, an oddly sad smile in place. "Be brave and be patient, the hard parts get easier with time.

+

They stick to the emptiest corners of the 'verse and only dock or land when they have too, only staying long enough to resupply. No one goes anywhere alone and everyone carries at least one weapon.

Jones donates every hidden weapon on his ship to them without being asked, only raising a concerned brow when he sees Ruby fumbling over the safety.

"She's rusty," Emma says, feeling oddly defensive. "She's not the best shot, but if someone comes gets within twenty feet of her she'll hit 'em center mass."

+

When it's Ruby's turn to cook she tends to sing as she works. More often than not Jefferson lingers outside as she sings and more often than not it's a good idea to lead him elsewhere.

"She has stars in her throat," Jefferson says with glassy eyes as Emma tugs him away from the mess hall. He frowns but follows her. "How sad that they're cutting her up inside."

+

When it's Jones' turn to cook he likes to make a production of it, even if it's just warmed up protein paste and flavor oils. He tells tales to whoever will listen as he bustles through the kitchen sometimes, each one less believable than the last. If he catches her in listening he has the terrible habit of winking like the terrible cliche he is at her.

"Like what you see, love?"

"Not even a little," She retorts. It's easy enough to turn on her heel and start making her way to _anywhere_ else. Anywhere that _he_ isn't. 

The warm sound of his laughter chases after her as she flees to the hallways.

Like most space-dwellers Emma speaks Jin-yu, English, Hakka, Mandarin, Old Sichuanese, and a little bit of Huizhou but she's never been able to find the words to explain the pit that lives inside her chest, just north of her heart. It's a terrible thing- sharp, angry, heavy, and always threatening to break through the thin barrier that keeps it from crashing into the tiny place where she keeps Ruby, Jefferson, and all the other assholes she never managed to outrun.

Behind her, she can still hear Jones' laughter and she can't help but worry that if she's not careful he'll catch her and climb inside her chest like all the others.

+

Billy breaks a promise to Emma on a broken down port and doesn't outlive Ruby.

"You," he grabs Emma's shirt with a bloody hand, pulling her close to him in one last act, "you have to-"

He doesn't finish his sentence and Emma finds herself grateful that they're under fire, that Ruby is on the ship with Jefferson, and that there is no way Ruby will ever be close enough to see the mess that is his neck and chest. 

There is nothing beautiful about Billy's death, no mistaking it for sleep.

"I will," she promises what's left of him. The scent of copper, more pungent than any of the ship's parts still floods her senses, staining her shirt and soul with the burden she'd have shouldered even if he hadn't asked her too.

"_Swan_," Jones is yelling from his own makeshift cover. "We have to _go_."

Emma's hand lingers over Billy's chest for a fraction of a second, her chest tight and her blood cold.

"I'll cover you," she shouts back to Jones, taking Billy's gun and dropping the magazine, checking it, and slamming it back in. "On three," Emma tells him.

"Swan-"

"_One_," He's going to argue, but she won't let him. "_Two-_"

+

You can't outrun death. 

Trying will only leave you exhausted and mostly useless. Probably a little drunk, too.

"You knew this was going to happen," it's not a question and they both know it. "You talked about her knowing pain in exchange for her being okay."

"I did."

"Did you know it was going to happen? Today, when you watched us leave?"

"I never know the exact dates," he says solemnly. "I imagine I'd be fully mad if I did."

Emma says nothing.

"Would you like to hurt me?"

Emma shrugs, still examining the mostly empty bottle in her hand. "Kinda," she finally admits. "But it won't help."

"I didn't know him as you did," he says slowly, "but-"

"You're right - you didn't know him," she snaps, cutting him off before she finds a reason to hurt him. 

Jefferson studies her, finally finding whatever it is he needs and taking a seat across from her.

"I'm not good company right now," she warms him. 

"You're never good company."

Emma tries to laugh but it all goes wrong halfway through and her bottle is falling to the floor, her stolen rum is soaking into her pants, and her face is buried in her hands as she screams. Jefferson stays blessedly silent as he holds her through it all.

+

She has a sore throat and her head is resting on Jefferson's thigh when Jones finds them. He clears his throat, for the first time Emma can remember he looks unsure of his welcome, like that might _matter_ to him.

Jefferson ignores his presence, continuing to pepper her hair with tiny braids.

"The lass," Jones says breaking their silence. "She's asleep now."

Emma blinks up at him, "Sedated?"

Jones makes an abstract motion with his hand that feels guilty enough to confirm her suspicions. 

"It's fine," she assures him, sitting up despite Jefferson's protests. She rubs at her eyes before dropping her hands to her lap, unable to meet Jones' eyes.

"I shouldn't have hoisted her off on you like that," Emma continues. "Sorry."

"No apology needed," Jones tilts his head, a sad smile on his face as he watches her. "But your lass, I imagine she'll be in need of a friend when she wakes."

"Yeah," Emma agrees. "I'll be there."

+

"We had a fight," Ruby tells her. "I didn't think couples survived fights like that, but we did," her voice breaks, breaking Emma along with it.

"The people who did this are dead," she tells Ruby, unsure if it will help. 

Ruby sniffs, wiping her nose on her sleeve and nods. "Good," she says looking certain and sounding too much like Emma for her own comfort.


	16. Chapter 16

There is a dichotomy living underneath her skin, fractures and jagged edges that are as much armor as they are a liability. Some that Emma inherited from the dead, others she earned by learning that surviving at any cost isn't just a saying - it's a tangible thing you have to carry with you and face in the mirror for the rest of your life.

  
She knows how to survive, how to economize. She knows how far and fast she can run if she needs too, how to sew up her skin with both hands, how to keep sleep and people at bay when needed, and she has learned that sometimes the best way to survive is by simply not being alone. It's not always that easy, but it also can be.

  
Asking for help - or occasionally just pointing her ship in the general direction of Granny and trying not to die - has been an option up until lately. Even when it was embarrassing, humiliating, or felt like failure. It was an option because Granny had decided Emma was _hers_. Granny, who has become somewhat synonymous with the idea of rescue and backup and that painful, horrible comfort that lulls Emma into becoming soft and lax without meaning too. Granny, who tricks her into not even realizing she's turning off that part of her brain that is always looking for a weapon or an escape.

Tricks her into thinking that its okay, too, even if that sounds like a lie.

  
Emma wants to be _that_ for Ruby, who walks the halls of the _Jolly Roger_ looking small and tired. Ruby, who treats Emma like she's a hero and not another burnt-out spacer just trying to get by.

  
Emma doesn't know how to be Granny, much less how to protect Ruby from inheriting Billy's ghost. She doesn't know how to check to see if Ruby is fractured beyond repair or tell if her jagged parts are being dulled or sharpened with time. She knows she needs to broach the topic, but all she can think of is standing there and crying in her shower because Graham was gone and everything felt like it would never ever feel less painful then it did at that moment. Emma remembers how Granny had pulled her out and dried her off with strong hands that refused to let go.

  
"What do you need?" Emma settles on.

  
Ruby turns to her, looking confused and a little mad before her face changes into something weary. Ruby holds out a hand towards Emma, and like a ship trapped in a gravity well Emma is pulled to it. She holds on to Ruby's hand, holding her breath and hoping that maybe _this_ can save them, that maybe this can be what Ruby needs.

  
"I'm okay," Ruby tells her - but Emma would know it was a lie even without her gift.

  
"I don't know how to help you."

  
"But you want to," Ruby says with a soft smile. "That's enough."

  
It's not, but _god_, Emma wishes it could be.

+

She's on shift, standing in a more-comfortable-than-uncomfortable silence with Ruby when the door to the bridge slides open and Jones walks in. He throws an arm over Emma's shoulder already talking a mile a minute to either Ruby, or her, or maybe just the 'verse in general. She's not sure, there wasn't a wind-up, no lead-in and she's unintentionally tuned him out while trying to figure out his presence. Jones is unapologetically present, comfortable enough to encroach on a space he wasn't invited as he fills the silence between her and Ruby.

  
She doesn't remember yeilding this right to him. Doesn't remember that moment when they moved past him tied to a chair, past a man collecting a debt, past a man on a mission to... whatever _this_ is.

  
Emma doesn't know whatever it is Jones just said, but she understands well enough when he turns to her with a raised brow and an expectant look. She knows that he has probably figured out she wasn't listening to him the same way she knows he'll let her get away with an eye roll and a gentle shove.

  
She shoves him and he yields, just enough before he bounces back into her space and resumes his dialog which pulls a soft smile from Ruby.

  
His arm is so warm compared to the chill of the ship.

+

Emma isn't sure what's happening in the room that used to be hers. There wasn't really time to think too much about who slept where or when their sleeping situation started to evolve into what it is now. For a while it meant fewer problems, then it meant everyone felt as rested as they could be considering the situation, but there in the excessive downtime of being on the run, there is too much time where there is nothing happening. Too much time to contemplate the chaos of their overly full room, the oddness of their toothbrushes sharing a cup, the calmness that settles over them.

  
There are too many times when they should be sleeping where Emma is sure she's not the only one lying awake in bed.

  
"Well?" Granny says, interrupting Emma's thoughts.

  
"Oh, yeah, I'm sleeping fine. It's just been a little more frustrating than I expected to try to get back without hitting any Alliance territory. We're burning time and supplies just to stay out of reach and it's … _irritating._"

  
On-screen, Granny nods sympathetically.

  
"How are you doing?"

  
Granny snorts, shaking her head, "I'm a tough old broad, my girl. I'll feel better once I get you both back home safe, though."

+

Ruby plots their courses, plugged into the background chatter of the 'verse more often than not.

  
She eats three meals a day, she still sings when it's her night to cook, and she quickly develops an oddly antagonistic and yet brand of fraternal affection for Jones.

  
Emma doesn't know what to do to help. She doesn't know if she can. She just feels useless and adrift, hopping from bridge shift to bridge shift, never really feeling like she's accomplishing anything but putting time between one moment and the next.

+

"Jones won't tell me how you two came to this," Ruby makes a vague shape with her chopsticks, "_arrangement_ of yours. I asked Jefferson and he gave me what I think was a lecture on dwarf stars and why some drugs are bad - but then he went on a tangent about a caterpillar who was an unreliable dealer."

  
There's a lot to say, but Emma finds the words dying on her lips.

"Emma," Ruby says, her voice soft and kind like it was when they met and when Grahmn died and all the other times Emma fell short of expectations. "It's-"

  
"You were _gone_," Emma says, cutting her off. Her eyes sting and suddenly she can't quite meet Ruby's eyes. "Granny and Billy were so scared. _I_ was so scared."

  
"I'm sor-"

  
"I'm not." She swallows, "I also don't know where to start and right now- right now it's still..."

"Fresh?" Ruby offers.

Emma shrugs, "Maybe?" Fresh sounds better than the memory of everything feels. The spinning loss and fear and rage- the _shame_ that clings to her like a shadow.

"That's okay. You tell me when you're ready, okay?"

+

Jefferson is always there when it gets to be too much. For a mad man, he's managed to be remarkably stable when she is at her most unstable. He seems to sense it in her, when it's almost too much- maybe it's like calling like or maybe she's less subtle than she wants to think she is. Either way, when she's close to her breaking point he is there, making himself a target or making her laugh.

It's just that easy, somehow.

It's just that comfortable.

She's been running for longer than she probably should have, which is why she isn't surprised when he's lounging against the wall when she takes a corner too sharply, too fast. She collides into him, but he's already braced for it and uses the momentum to spin her into the wall. His eyes are just far enough away, looking through her for something in the 'verse she can't see, for that edge of danger to spark tingles at the base of her neck.

She stands where he has her trapped, panting as the chill of the wall leaching into her sore muscles and reveling in the soothing heat of his skin where his body is pressing into hers.

"Good run?" His smile is wide and smug and his scarf is likely abandoned in some other room, letting his scars free to gleam under the low-lighting in the halls in the mostly closed-down portion of the _Jolly Roger._

"It passes the time," Emma licks her lips, taking inventory of her path up until this point. They're deep enough in the ship right now that no one will wander into them on accident. Jefferson is considerate that way.

He makes a thoughtful sound as his hands slide their way down to her hips. On either side of her, a finger dips into the soft waistband of her pants just enough to scratch at her skin with his calloused fingers.

"If you knew Time as well as I do, you wouldn't talk about wasting it."

+

Jones finds her on the way to the shower, his smirk and cocked eyebrow seemingly his only acknowledgment of her rumpled state and the smell that likely clings to her skin in comparison to the sterile environment of the ship.

This is less predictable, less comfortable. Emma isn't quite sure what to do with this - with _them_.

He leaves for his bridge shift before she can be tempted to say anything, a cheeky comment tossed over his shoulder a helpful reminder that everything is okay between them even if it is … confusing.

  
She's held Jones through the night a few times when the dreams or rum was too much for him, twice more when she'd asked him to cede ground to Hook to further whatever agenda needed Hook's tender mercies. It was the least she could do, and she suspects he would do the same for her- even if she didn't have a reason for asking.

They haven't tested that aspect, not yet. For all that they share a room and a bed at the end of the day, for all that he purrs his whispers and wicked insinuations into her ear in the middle of battles or boredom, for all the swagger and belonging he exudes every time he takes his place at her shoulder - that's where it ends.

+

Emma wants to ask Ruby what it all means, but Ruby's songs have been getting softer and sadder and Emma can't think of a worse time to ask this of her.

Instead, Emma curls up with Ruby and watches endless pirated films from the Core with her, letting Ruby fill the room with her commentary and when Emma is particularly lucky, her laughter.

+

"You'll be disappointed in me when I tell you," Emma admits in the silence of the hallway.

Ruby's hand finds hers, thin fingers winding in with hers.

"I might be, but I'll get over it."

"It was bad."

Ruby squeezes her hand, "Like running away and dragging your family, boyfriend, and best friend into several months of hell because you made a mistake?"

"It's-"

"You still love me, right?"

Emma nods, "Of course. Always."

"Then why do you think I'm going to stop loving you if you make a mistake in response to my fuck up? At least your fuck up didn't kill anyone."

There's a bitterness and self-loathing in Ruby's voice that Emma knows all too well.

"People died," Emma admits. "More than just the guards at the prison."

"_Ah_," Ruby breathes in sharply, eyes darting away. "You know, I want to feel bad - but I feel like if you killed them, then they probably needed killing. And," Ruby shrugs, "I think I can live with that. Is that horrible?"

Emma doesn't have an answer for her.

+

Refueling and resupplying has never been this hard.

They're too well known with too many zeros after the prices on their heads to feel safe anywhere that isn't on their ship.

"Be safe," Ruby whispers, pressing a soft kiss to her cheek. She does the same for Jones before falling back to stand next to Jefferson who throws a companionable arm over her shoulders in a one-handed hug that Ruby happily nestles into.

Emma shares a smile and look with him, and he inclines his head in return, patting the gun that sits awkwardly on his hip with a toothy smile.

If he has breath in his body, Ruby will be as safe as he can possibly make her.

+

Emma's only been back for half when Jones walks in on them while he's should be starting his shift on the bridge.

Instead, he's standing shock still in the doorway while Emma is bent over the small table in their quarters with Jefferson behind her.

Jones' snaps out of his shock quicker than Emma does. His eyes trail over them both, lazy and amused. Emma stands up as much as she can, the arm that isn't bracing her moving to cover herself for what little that seems to be worth, while Jefferson is absolutely no help. She's going to vent him into space one of these days and no one will question it.

"Don't stop on my behalf," Jones gives her a wink as he wanders past them, over to the nightstand where he makes a show of plucking up a datapad up from the mess there and waving it at them on his way out.

As the door slides shut once more Emma still feels frozen in place. Behind her, Jefferson bursts into a booming laugh. She half turns, shoving at his shoulder in protest.

"What?"

"Seriously?" She grouses, unable to keep a smile from her own face as Jefferson's laughter continues to spill out from within him.

"It's fine. You're just embarrassed." He bends, presses a fond kiss to the back of her head, "Let me make it up to you?"

Emma turns, snatching at one of Jefferson's wrists and pushing him off balance just enough to make him unsteady on his feet. She pushes him, watching him stumble and fall onto the bed behind him, the way his pupils expand and his breathing speed up.

"I'll let you _try,_" she concedes, more than a little surprised at her own reaction and the fire that feels like it's licking at her belly.

+

That evening seems to set something off in Jefferson. She catches him watching Jones more often. She finds herself receiving more and more attention from Jefferson when it's just the three of them in their quarters. Deep kisses out of nowhere that leaves her panting and confused in the middle of inane, idle conversations. Less than chaste touches if she's sitting or standing within arm's reach of him - and occasionally she even gets pulled down to his lap when he's sitting.

She goes with it. Unsure why, but at the same time loving the strange thrill even if she did wish she couldn't feel her face catching fire or Jones' eyes on her when it happened.

  
Jefferson exudes nonchalance each time he initiates one of these moments, often carrying on a conversation with Jones if his mouth is free and acting like nothing is out of sorts, like Emma isn't blushing and squirming as Jones' eyes burn a hole through her.

She isn't sure what's happening, but she knows what it's not. It's not possessive posturing, it's not a power play. She wouldn't go along with this strange dance of theirs if it was, she knows that much.

  
They should talk about it, she also knows. They should be adults and exchange honest questions and answers about what is happening and if everyone is on board for it. Perhaps define what is happening before someone gets hurt or gets the wrong idea.

Instead, Jefferson continues to act out and Emma and Jones end up staring at each other, breathless and unsure of who makes the next move, much less what that move is.

It's uncharted territory and it's become the new normal when the doors are closed and it's just the three of them.

+

"Did I ever tell you about my parents?"

Emma stills, clutching her tea to her chest and unsure where to look. She settles for watching her teabag and shrugging. "A little."

Ruby sighs, wrapping her shawl tighter around her and leaning into Emma's side. Emma moves automatically, making more room for her and wrapping an arm around her. She doesn't remember how she learned how to do this but she suspects she has Ruby to blame. Ruby, who has spent most of the time she's known Emma making her into a person who doesn't flinch when touched.

"My mom was… _a lot_. Lots of emotions, lots of battles, lots of felonies."

"But you loved her," Emma knows.

"I loved her so much."

The kitchen is quiet, still, but it doesn't feel as lonely as it has some evenings.

"I always kind of wondered what kind of mom I would be," Ruby admits.

"Me too."

Ruby stiffens for a moment, but Emma smiles down at her and squeezes her against her.

"It's okay," Emma promises, hoping Ruby is listening. "It's more of a twinge than a hurt these days."

The only sound between them for a long time is the sounds of Ruby's knife on the cutting board.

"How long did it take?"

Emma isn't sure. There are moments where it can still feel fresh and sharp, and worse moments where she almost feels nothing at all. "I don't remember it happening, or why," she admits. "It just happened."

+

That night Emma finds herself sitting astride Jefferson's lap, his chest pressed into her back and his chin tucked over her shoulder as they both face Jones. One of Jefferson's hands is busy, drawing maddening patterns into her skin under her shirt, making her shiver and shake while his other hand is pets ever so softly at the skin on her stomach that her rucked up shirt has exposed. Despite this, Jones' eyes don't seem to leave hers.

  
Emma closes her eyes, taking a steadying breath before opening them again.

  
Behind her, Jefferson continues telling her how beautiful she is like this, his words soft and low and true enough to make her dizzy. In front of her, Jones is still standing there with a strange, hungry look. His hand hanging in the space between them like he was going to touch her face or hair but stopped himself before he could. The world around them has turned into a delightful wave of static and sensation and she doesn't know what she needs to say to make Jones touch her face but for some reason, she needs that and she'll say whatever it is if he would just bridge the gap between them.

"Jones," she whispers. His eyes darken but he holds still. "_Killian_," she tries.

  
Something rolls behind his eyes at that and he's stepping closer to her, his palm sliding against her face, directing her chin higher up to better face him. His hand is warm and rough and Emma leans into it and closes her eyes just in time for him to pull away from her and disappear out the door.

  
"It's not you, my dear," Jefferson whispers in her ear as his ministrations pick up their pace and the hand that was once petting at her stomach begins to drift lower. "Your pirate simply doesn't know who you want him to be, much less what to do with me. It's all a bit much for him, you see - but he'll thank me someday. Just you wait."

  
Emma barely hears him.

+

They don't talk about it. She continues to call him Jones and he treats her no differently.

  
He's still a scoundrel, a flirt, a thorn in her side, and her most reliable backup when fists or bullets start flying. She knows he will find her eyes in the heat of battle. He will cover her and trust her to do the same.

  
She's not sure what she is to him, but at night she takes to sleeping on her back in case he decides he needs to curl into her side.

+

More and more often she wakes to a dead arm, all pins and needles thanks to a lump of warm pirate clutching at her side, kohl smeared on her sleep shirt where his face was.

+

Ruby's songs aren't quite so heavy these days. She still cries more than Emma would like, but she also starts a particularly vicious poker night with the boys when Emma is on the bridge, she's declared Jones into her sous chef on the nights she cooks, and she begs Jefferson to let her turn some curtains from the _Cheshire_ into a dress and proceeds to give them all a spur of the moment fashion show.

They're still on the most wanted list and Billy's ghost is keenly felt and it's not okay... but it feels like maybe it's getting there.

Maybe.

+

"Do you love me?"

  
Jefferson stops typing, turning to watch her. His brow is furrowed, his face clearly confused.

"I've killed men for you, abandoned my own comfortable existence and pursuit of vengeance because you needed help, and you ask me if I love you?" He laughs, shaking his head. "Emma, I love you in almost all of the ways a person can love another."

"Are you _in_ love with me?"

Jefferson smiles, soft and indulgent, "Would you like me to be?"

Emma thinks about that, unsure how to answer. She's deep enough in thought that she misses him getting up and moving to her side until she feels his lips pressed against her temple.

"I know this can be hard for you," he says while his hands rub a soothing circle into her shoulder. "So I'm going to confirm what you suspect: I am not your happy ending any more than you are mine. And that's okay."

Emma leans into his touch, unsure why that knowledge brings equal parts relief and frustration, "Do people like us even get happy endings?"

"You'd be surprised at just how happy you can be," Jefferson says, slipping into his faraway voice that's full of stars and stories.

+

They're low enough on fuel that they risk skirting the edge of Alliance space to make it to a planet Jefferson is sure they can get fuel on. True to history, this is where everything goes sideways and they get a malfunction on their shields just long enough to register on the Alliance's radar.

The Alliance doesn't even give them so much as a hail - much less a warning shot. She's not sure if it's the stolen Alliance ship or the bounties on their heads, doesn't even have time to comprehend what is happening because life support is knocked out on 2 decks and the center of the ship is venting ATMO from an open wound punched into it with the first plasma weapon volley they received.

  
Emma had been on shift, and she watches, stuck on the bridge as Jones and Jefferson haul an unconscious Ruby into the last escape pod. Jefferson makes eye contact with the same camera she's looking through with what an unnerving surety. The left side of his face is covered in blood and he's struggling to hide a limp, but she sees it as easily as she sees the way Jones is favoring the left side of his body. She doesn't know where they were, how Ruby was knocked out, but she's content just knowing they're alive and near enough to a working escape pod.  
"I'm rerouting the pods, new coordinates are being sent to them now," she tells them over the intercom. "It's a bit of a journey, but the old destination was input assuming we didn't have a price on our heads."

  
Jones looks noticeably relieved, but Jefferson doesn't. She wonders what the 'verse has told him or if he figured out the truth on his own. He's lived in the darkness between the stars longer than she has, after all. He knows the rules of space, the maths of it.

  
You don't board a shit without knowing the ways off of a ship. You skimp on anything you can, except fuel and life support. When your ship is outgunned or badly damaged you do not pass go, you do not go get sentimental items from your cabin, you get the fuck off it asap. You certainly don't waste time on the bridge double-checking and sending out coordinates.

  
She's surprised Jones hasn't caught on if she's being honest. She's glad he hasn't. On the screen, she watches in black and white as he helps Ruby into her harness. He smiles, wide and bright and she can't hear him but she knows he's being cheeky from the way his eyes crinkle up and the way Ruby relaxes a little more despite the hammering of the railguns that seems to shake the floor beneath them and threatens to send them all out into the dark, cold of the 'verse once they get through the armored hull that has survived.

  
On-screen, Jefferson straps himself in, looking anywhere but at the camera.

  
"I'm strapping in now," Emma lies, feeling oddly calm despite the influx of hot, heavy tears on her face. "Launch, I'm right behind you."

  
Jones seems to hesitate at this, frowning for a moment before continuing his own launch sequence with the sure movements of a seasoned spacer. She reaches the screen in front of her, pulling back after contact. Instead, she twists her fingers in the necklaces around her neck.

  
It's okay. Not for her, but for them, and that's all that matters now.

  
"Killian," she says his name, soft and carefully - nothing like the last time. She can feel the weight of the word on her tongue, see it in the way his whole body seems to still when he hears it. "You two will take care of Ruby for me, yeah?"

  
"No harm will come to her, Emma, I swear it," he pledges it to her so solemnly that her heart physically aches in her chest.

  
"Thank you," She almost feels bad, but it's too late for that and she doesn't have time for that. Now when she can hear the systems screaming out all around her, feel the gravity tapering off and leaving her drifting as the hull outside the bridge begins to fail.

  
She watches as the last pod door slides shut as she hooks her foot under the console to keep her there as true weightlessness sets in and she powers up the few remaining weapons systems she can coax to life to buy their pod a chance to get free. For a moment it looks futile - but just as Emma is about to curse at the screen in front of her flickers to life.

  
_Weapons system: Online_ the Jolly Roger announces, ever the fighter.

  
"You and me," Emma whispers to the bridge. "We got some history, huh?" There's no response, just the deafening thuds of the rail guns outside as Emma launches the manual control board. She punches in the commands, holding her breath until she can hear the whining charge start to build, crescendo, and discharge. On-screen she sees a blackened gouge on the Alliance ship where the read-facing rail guns were once mounted. There's one left and Emma frantically keys in coordinates, ignoring the screeching of metal to her left and watching with ice in her veins as it turns towards the pod.

  
"Once more," she begs the ship.

  
The 'verse grants her wish, the last charge firing, wiping it off the face of the ship just as the last of the power reserves deplete.

  
Emma closes her eyes, unhooking her foot from the foothold and letting herself drift as the screeching of metal rending gets louder and louder.


End file.
